Second Martian Method attempt

This thread is my second attempt at using the "Martian Method" or "Artificial Darkness" lighting technique developed by SalMayo and associates. For full disclosures and disclaimers, see my first attempt: http://boards.cannabis.com/grow-log/...ml#post1945600 but to summarize: I didn't invent this lighting technique nor do I claim to fully understand it. I'm just testing it to see for myself what it can do.

This time I'm going with one Heavy Duty Fruity plant in soilless mix using Pure Blend Pro for vegging (done by this point) and FoxFarm chemical nutes for flowering.

I was going to start this thread a week or two ago, but I couldn't get the light timing right so she just kept vegging, and grow logs of vegging plants are not terribly exciting.

I've set the lighting to 6/7/10/1 from a previous 6/10/8 schedule. If she doesn't start flowering in the next 7-10 days, I'm going to take an hour from daylight and put it to total darkness, but I don't think that will be necessary.

She was the mother and has been replaced by a young upstart, but it's a shame to waste such a nice, mature plant so I'm flowering her!

Also to note, the lighting is:
42W CFL, 6500K
26W CFL 6500K (the other 42W broke)
2x 25W red incandescent lights
8x 13W 660nm red LED bulbs consisting of 168 5mm LEDs each (don't ever buy these, they suck)

Sorry I'm lame at the computer but I don't know how to send a message to Weezard specifically, so I'm posting it here assuming he'll read my thread (yeah, I know, ass-u-me...)

Weez! Just saw your rep message! I'd send you one back but "I have to spread some rep around before giving it to Weezard again" damn. Things are going great with me, since I'm done with school now and trying to find a job. HA! At some point I'm going to go all LED (or at least almost all LED) and I'll be reading and re-reading your LED threads to get as much info as I can before I embark. I hope all's well with you, peace and love.

Weezard should see this, but just-in-case, we got a chess game (spelled s-l-a-u-g-h-t-e-r) goin' on and I'll post to him there.

Weezard helped me build a high powered light. I highly recommend it! :thumbsup:

I followed your first log as much as I could. (Was busy blowing up leds...) And I didn't know how to subscribe back then. So, subscribed! :thumbsup:

Good luck. I think you all are onto something! :abduct:

Sweet I'm in..:thumbsup:

Hi mother.... What is your estimate on the time factor for your PAD light combo?

i'm in too! glad i caught this one from the beginning. so now i'll only have to hurt my brain daily as opposed to trying to play catch up!


-shake

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Mother

Sorry I'm lame at the computer but I don't know how to send a message to Weezard specifically, so I'm posting it here assuming he'll read my thread (yeah, I know, ass-u-me...)

Weez! Just saw your rep message! I'd send you one back but "I have to spread some rep around before giving it to Weezard again" damn. Things are going great with me, since I'm done with school now and trying to find a job. HA! At some point I'm going to go all LED (or at least almost all LED) and I'll be reading and re-reading your LED threads to get as much info as I can before I embark. I hope all's well with you, peace and love.

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No worries, Mom ,I'll be lurking.

Next time just click on my avatar and check "all posts by"
Find the last post and hit reply.
When ya got nothin' betta' to do, start clicking around just to see what is do-able.
There's all kine fun to be had in cyber-land.:D

Aloha,
Weezard

Hey Dog: my time factor... I've been kicking around in my head what my time factor is, but more importantly how to calculate it... The following is really my mind rambling around and me putting it into writing here, so please don't consider it any sort of guide or truth. :-) As always, I present ideas to generate more ideas... New ideas and corrections and questions and critiques are invited and encouraged.

I have to take into account at least these things:
1. Quality of light, meaning what are the wavelengths being used
2. Relative quantity of light, meaning how much of each wavelength is present in relation to the others
3. Absolute quantity of light, meaning total wattage of light rays bouncing around

So I have some 660nm LED light and red incandescent light, but how much of each in relation to each other, and how much overall?

Some seat-of-my-pants guesses...

8 LED bulbs at 13W draw each = 104W draw... since they're 5mm LEDs, they're not particularly efficient. I don't know how to calculate efficiency, but I believe it's a function of the intensity and wavelength of light coming out of the LED. For example, if an LED takes 10W input and produces 100 lumens of 660nm light output, I'd have to figure out how much energy is in 100 lumens of 660nm light to be able to figure out how much of the electrical energy is converted to light energy. For all light sources, including LEDS, this conversion is not particularly efficient as compared to other types of energy conversion. For example, converting electrical energy to mechanical energy (via electric motor) can be as high as 98% efficient, meaning 100W of electricity will produce 98W of motion. Efficiency rates for converting electricity to light are much, much lower. Even in LEDs, it's not that great. For example, a Luxeon K2 Royal Blue LED (LXK2-PR14-Q00) produces 475mW of light on 3.85W of electrical input, making it about 12.3% efficient (475mW / 3,850mW). Even though that color blue is particularly inefficient in LED form, it's still in the range of overall LED efficiency.

Since 5mm LEDs are significantly less efficient than Luxeons, I'll take a guess that my 5mm Red LEDs are around 5-10% efficient, meaning every 13W bulb I have puts out around .7 to 1.3 Watts of light.

Incandescent bulbs are far less efficient. Common references on the internet say 95% of the electricity of incandescent bulbs is converted to heat, making them 5% efficient. On top of that, though, of the light they are producing, a large part of that is infrared (even beyond the plant-usable 750nm edge), so in terms of usable light, they're maybe 3 or 4% efficient. Add a red coating on the bulb to block blue/green/yellow and you get maybe 1-2% efficiency.

So taking the high estimates, I'd guess 10.4W of 660nm LED light and 1W of red incandescent light (ranging from 620-ish to 750-ish nm) gives me a ratio of about 10:1.

Taking that ratio, I can then figure out the time factor for each type of light, then weight them accordingly. My guesses for those are 5.5 for 660nm light and 2 for red incandescents (from post 168 of my last grow log). Weighting those ratios, I get an overall time factor of about 5.2.

My current schedule is 6/7/10/1 so I have 8 hours of AD and 10 hours of SID. If my 8 hours of AD really are at a time factor around 5.2, that gives me a SID equivalent of just over 1.5 hours. Add that to the 10 hours of SID and my guess is that my plants perceive just over 11.5 hours of SID.

I think I've already gotten way too far ahead of myself in my assumptions and calculations, but I can say that a 6/9/8/1 schedule keeps the plant solidly in vegging, so the time factor is definitely more than 2.5. I have yet to see if the new schedule produces flowering, so I can't say if there's enough SID equivalent time yet or not. I can count and calculate and conjecture all I want, but the plants will tell me what the truth is. As I experiment, I learn, and as I learn, I can eliminate what is not true to figure out what is left, which leads me nearer to the truth.

One more thing, my Vanilla Moon mother decided that it's done with vegging and it's going to flower whether I like it or not, so I'm going to put that plant in here too. It's been a mother for probably 4 or 5 months, so perhaps there are some distant relatives that are autoflowerers or maybe I just kept it around too long. The flowering stage it's in looks like a regular plant that's been flowering for maybe 10-14 days, so it should be right on schedule with the shorter-flowering HDF plant.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Mother

Taking that ratio, I can then figure out the time factor for each type of light, then weight them accordingly. My guesses for those are 5.5 for 660nm light and 2 for red incandescents (from post 168 of my last grow log). Weighting those ratios, I get an overall time factor of about 5.2.

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Ok this is what I wanted too see you post.. :)

Your schedule of 6/7/10/1 is really 6 hours of blue (pal) light and 8 hours of red (PAD) light and 10 hours of SID (standard indoor darkness). You don't need to split up the red PAD light (just so you know). Your estimate time factor of 2.0 for red INC is correct and you also correctly have 660 estimated at 5.5 awesome!! Your PAD light schedule can have no MORE then a 4.0 time factor just to make 12 hours of SID and that's not including the lag time going from PAD to SID. So if you think your 5.2 time factor is correct then you will not hit 12 hours of SID with that schedule. You will be in the 11.53 range of SID not counting lag time.

Let's re-cap.... You are using 8 hours of PAD and your also using 10 hours of SID. So using 8 hours of PAD you need to get approximately 2.5 hours of SID equivalent counting lag time. So doing the math you cannot go over 3.2 on your PAD time factor to achieve 12.5 hours of SID.

Let's re re-cap...

8 hours of PAD divided by 3.2 (time factor) is 2.5 hours of SID added to your 10 hours of SID = 12.5 SID total.

Hope this makes sense.

What ever light schedule you chose to use it's all about PAD time factors to get your SID equivalent time correct. :thumbsup:

Dog: Yeah, those are the numbers that I got too. You're probably right about it being shy of a full 12 hours SID. I'm going to keep it where it's at right now to see how the plants respond. Since it's right at the edge (or seems to be, from the estimates) it should be a good test to see if the plant response falls more on one side (vegging) or the other (flowering) which should tell us how close the estimates are. :thumbsup:

Mother your time factor is too high IMO. You want to run a PAD time factor that you can run alot of and get a good SID equivalent.

With an estimated PAD time factor of 5.2 you need to run 12 hours of your PAD lights just to get 2.5 hours of SID, plus you also need 10 hours of SID to make a total of 12.5 SID. This only leaves you with 2 hours of blue light (PAL) on time.

Just tryng to help :thumbsup:

Sorry this should of said.

With an estimated PAD time factor of 5.2 you need to run 12 hours of your PAD lights just to get 2.3 hours of SID, plus you also need 10 hours of SID to make a total of 12.3 SID. This still only leaves you with 2 hours of blue light (PAL) on time.

You're probably right, we'll see if the plants agree. :thumbsup:

Pull some of the 660 and the spectrum will fit the schedule. :thumbsup:

I was actually thinking about doing the opposite: doubling the red incandescents from 2 to 4, but I'm wondering if that would get things a little too warm... I'll see what the plants tell me they need, and I'll figure out the plan from there. :-)

Hey Dog I changed my mind about waiting. I thought about it and realized that I don't have time to wait (I have a deadline that this crop needs to be done by) so I changed the lighting schedule to a simple 4/9/11 which should give me about 1.73 hours of SID-equivalent PAD time if the factor of 5.2 is correct. That would be a total of 12.73 SID-equivalent hours, which should be solidly flowering. :thumbsup: :thumbsup: :thumbsup:

Hi mother that looks good.

Mother if we were playing the hot and clod game I would now be saying your hot LOL....Let's play a little game. If you were to remove your SID in that schedule and replace it with PAD. What time factor would you need to be running? :thumbsup:

Just got an email from Dog and found this new Martian Method thread.

I'm a little behind due to a rist sprain, but should be back up to speed and posting soon.

Till then.

Take Care, Sal.

Ouch, a sprained wrist sounds rough. Hopefully it was from something cool like stopping an armed robbery or trying to lift a plant with too big a yield... :thumbsup:

Dog: at four hours of PAL, I'm left with 20 hours of time that I need to fit 12.5 hours of SID equivalent time into. If I have to use all PAD and no actual SID, I'd need a time factor of 20/12.5 = 1.6.

For readers who may be confused at our acronyms:
PAL: Photosynthetic Artificial Light
This is what most people would call an indoor plant's "daylight". Photosynthetic because the plant is creating energy from light, Artificial because it's coming from light bulbs and not from nature, and Light because the color from the blue end of the spectrum makes that plant think it's daytime.
PAD: Photosynthetic Artificial Darkness
P and A same as above, Darkness because certain colors from the red end of the spectrum make the plant think it's nighttime.
SID: Standard Indoor Darkness
AKA total darkness. Since this is the absence of all light, it's an easy standard to base other calculations off of. As indoor growers we know that we need about 12 hours of SID to make a plant flower, so we can calculate what PAD does to a plant based on known relationships of the effects different types of PAD light as compared to SID.

So when we post a timing schedule that looks like 4/9/11
The 4 is blue because it's PAL, the 9 is red because it's PAD, and the 11 is black because it's SID.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Mother

Dog: at four hours of PAL, I'm left with 20 hours of time that I need to fit 12.5 hours of SID equivalent time into. If I have to use all PAD and no actual SID, I'd need a time factor of 20/12.5 = 1.6.

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Oops my bad.. No SID in the mix = pretty much no Lag time... So you basically need 12 hours of equivalent SID. A PAD time factor of no higher then 1.66..

Once you think about it... There are many different Combinations to chose from...

The only problem I see right now. You are using an estimated time factor of 2 and an estimated time factor of 5.5 to get an estimated time factor of 5.2..... estimated x estimated = estimated... The good news is I think you overshot your estimated time factor and your plants will act more like a 11/13 type of flower. I think that gives you more (if you want) PAD on time...

Let's say your PAD time factor is actually around 4.2. Then you could run 10 hours of PAD 4/10/10
and you would have 12.3 SID

Now the question is can we get Sal to look at your PAD lighting you got posted and give his estimate on an estimated time factor.

Mother do you run your 660 during your PAL time?

Hey Dog, I got my estimated time factor at 5.2 because there's a lot more 660 light than there is red incandescent, so I believe it weights the factor more.

For example, if I had one red 660 LED and 10 red incandescent bulbs, it should be a different overall time factor than if I had one red incandescent bulb and 10 660 LEDs. That's because there's a lot more of a given type of light, so it pushes the overall time factor in that direction. At least this is the assumption that I'm working with, and given what else I know about how light works, I think it's a reasonable one. Just multiplying the factors together (2x5.5) ignores how much of each type of light is present.

I run all of the lights during the PAL time: CFLs, LEDs and red incandescents. The only thing that happens on the switch from PAL to PAD is the CFLs turn off. Then on the change from PAD to SID, everything else turns off. Then on the change from SID to PAL, everything turns on, and so the cycle goes.

can i ask where these time factors come from? how does one get these numbers?

thanks for the PAL/PAD/SID definitions by the way. this is hard enough to follow as it is!

sorry if i sound like an idiot newb! just trying to soak everything in that i can.


-shake

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Mother

Just multiplying the factors together (2x5.5) ignores how much of each type of light is present.

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Not sure were this came from..


My 4.2 PAD time factor estimate is just a guess.. :thumbsup:

Quote:

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Originally Posted by headshake

can i ask where these time factors come from? how does one get these numbers?

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Snake read post #76 in mother first thread again.. This should give you a a little more info.
All spectrums have a time factor..

Right now all the time factors we have are....

SID (standard indoor darkness) 1.0
SOD (standard outdoor darkness) .8
Red Incandescent Aprox 2.0
Red 660 Aprox 5.5

My uncle and I have found Red Cfl's are faster then 660. Just not sure exactly the time factor. My guess is Red CFL's are around 4.5

Hope this helps.. :thumbsup:

thanks dog! i'll definitely read that. these advanced topics make my head hurt sometimes.

i'm just tyring to catch some hind tit here!

thanks again.


-shake

Dog: Couldn't have said it better myself.
:thumbsup: :D

We could clarify a little more. Sorry I'm not trying to confuse any one. According to Sal's post #76... Time Factors are SID and slower (1.0 1.1 1.2 and up)....Time Rate is what's referred to as faster then SID (.9 .8 .7 and lower)...

I Just wanted to get the correct terminology out there.. When the info is released in October everyone should have a good idea about Time Factor verses Time Rates. :thumbsup:

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Dogznova

All spectrums have a time factor..

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Sorry I need to fix this. Some spectrums have Time Rates.

SOD (standard outdoor darkness) has a Time Rate of .8 Not a Time Factor

My bad I was :confused:

This is what they look like right now.

First one is both plants, HDF plant on the left, VM on the right
Second one is HDF plant up close
Third one is VM plant up close

Mother.... It's looking like those girls have a good start... :thumbsup:

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Dogznova

Now the question is can we get Sal to look at your PAD lighting you got posted and give his estimate on an estimated time factor.

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The estimates look good, but these are limited to Surface Time Factors and Affect Time Factors tend to be lower, especially for higher sources for Far Red Radiation such as the Red Inc.'s. (Different canopy location/different spectrum/differenent result).

A helpful reminder is that the Time Factor were researched approaching from the veg not end of flower side of the timing schedules, so the Time Factors used tend to be at a starting point on the veg side. This was done decause growth is present if too much veg is present, while on the other side the plant goes dormant and no growth can be observed.

Hope this helps.

Take Care, Sal.

Hi Sal, you gave me some interesting food for thought... I'll have to digest it a bit. ;)

Here's how they're looking now. I did some lower branch pruning since they weren't getting enough light and were never going to be useful to the plant (or me).

First one is the whole setup, second one is HDF, third one is VM.

I had some space open up elsewhere so I moved the Vanilla Moon plant out, so it's back to the original plan of just the HDF plant, which is happily getting more light now that it has the whole space to itself. :thumbsup:

Time Rates refer to how fast time moves as a multiple of standard time rate.

Time Factors refer to how slow time moves verses a standard time rate.

Since the vast majority of the timing differences are slower than the standard time rate of SID (TF = 1.0) I use Time Factors not rates to describe the differences.

Rauber does use Time Rates as well as Time Factors to describe the different relationships. Since most Time Rates for the Spectrums used are less than 1.0, using Time Rates, rather than Time Factors, would result in mostly decimal or percentage type numbers that I believe would be too much overload for most readers. (I think we should limit the conversation to Factors to avoid confusion. Yes, I'm actually trying to avoid confusion!)

Bandwidth is the spread out of individual cell's genetic clock's positions (readings) resulting from the changes in the spectrum as it travels through the leaves (canopy). Some bandwidth is natural, but it can be increased and decreased as desired to achieve a desired effect.

At the moment Mother and Dog are using methods with a fair amount of bandwidth, which allows for easier timer dial in, since it's easier to sense when nearing a desired target schedule.

Reducing Bandwidth increases the level of specific responce, but allows for less error up and down on the numbers and changes in timing can be more pronounced, good or bad. Being more accurate you can miss entirely, which is good if you want miss one while hitting the other.

SOD (Standard Outdoor Darkness) spectrumS (plural) have Time FactorS (plural) from about 0.8 to 1.0 depending on how you define the beginning and ending of Darkness on an outdoor schedule. Which is why SID (Standard Indoor Darkness) with it's single Time Factor is used as a standard.

To re-answer HeadShakes question on where these come from - originally I thought that I had discovered the Time Factor of 660nm LEDs by trial and error measurements that took 3 months to narrow down (got three months to detect and measure a number, using 3 day timers), but I defer to Rauber's original work from 1992 where he defined similar data for various spectrums, in addition to defining other relevent dynamics in C-3 vascular plants. In short, for SDP (Short Day Plants) the Time Factors (and/or Time Rates) come from lengthly subject comparisons of 12/12 control plant photoperiodic responces compared to test plant responces to various spectrum and time combinations.

And if you head doesn't hurt enough, to calculate the affects (root production) of Blue "Daylight" hours (real time), we will discuss PAL (Photosynthetic Artificial Light) Time Factors and of course total daily gene time (gene ticks - ticks). (tick tick tick tick...)

Eventually the entire schedule is ballanced/combined and totalled as a whole to consider it's whole affect/effect.

Take care, Sal.

wow, i think my head just exploded!

thanks Sal!

and that's exaclty why i love plants.


-shake

Quote:

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Originally Posted by headshake

wow, i think my head just exploded!

thanks Sal!

and that's exaclty why i love plants.


-shake

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Yeah, that hurt my head as well... :stoned: I understood like half of that, so I guess what is next is to read on and do some studying.....

Hello everyone

Sorry about letting this thread get stale. :-(

Here are some new pictures. Good news is I'm learning about time factors, bad news is that whatever time factor I'm using, it's not working for flowering. :-)

The first picture is the whole plant, the second two are close-ups of two different stems. You can see they started budding a little at some point, but they're pretty much vegging now. There's very little, if any, height increase at this point. It seems as if the plant is getting not enough daylight to grow (veg-wise) but not enough night time to flower.

I don't have the time or space to flower this plant out now, since it's about at the maximum height for the space it's in and if I were to flower it, it would get much taller. It's such a pretty plant, I hate to throw it out, but I'm not sure what to do with it at this point. Any ideas / suggestions?