First attempt at a 24-hour "Martian Method"

[Mother]

Photosynthesis is used to produce the results dictated by the Blue Clock, but Red/FR affects the clock speed (reading). Flower signals (mRNA) are produced at the end of the night (12/12), and the functions signalled are executed during the day and night (with or without immediate photosynthetic activity).

Ah ha! That makes a lot of sense as to why the 12 hour SID-equivalent is so important. This was a part of what I was missing in order for it to make sense. It explains why flowering seems to be an all-or-nothing affair, hence my plants are either "flowering" or "re-vegging", but not a significant amount of both at the same time.

I always seems so simple once you understand BOTH the basics available to you at this time - Artificial Darkness Characteristics AND (Spectral) Time Rates. And you hit upon a very interesting point, SID is just that THE INDOOR STANDARD, and we have made it THE INDOOR DARKNESS TIME RATE STANDARD, e.i. THE TIME FACTOR OF SID IS 1.00 (100%).

That makes the most sense to me. Since indoor growers are the target audience for the Martian Method, basing the standard on something we're all familiar with is the best choice indeed.

The Time Rate for SOD is 1.2 times that of SID. TIME RATE AND TIME FACTOR ARE INVERSELY related. We us Time Factors because they are easier to interpret for slower than SID spectrums, i.e. TIME FACTOR is how many times slower, whereas Time Rate is how many times faster.

So for any spectrum, to get a number of SID HOURS of work done,
REAL TIME = (SID TIME)*(TIME FACTOR).

Makes good sense to me.

(Note that slower Artificial Darkness spectrums with Time Factors larger than 2, cannot put 12 hours of SID activity in under 24 hours! BUT, using spectrums with Time Factors of less than 2, makes 24 hours day Martian Method growing possible. (Static Example, Dynamic is better but probably too complicated for average users.).

Also makes good sense to me.

Giving you SID as a standard did mean much by itself, but you used relavence to quantify other Time Factors in relation to it, and in the process you have not only quantified a second spectrum time factor (time rate) against a know standard (we use SID, you used SOD), but you also NOW HAVE A STANDARDIZED SYSTEM OF QAUNTIFYING ANY SPECTRUM'S TIME FACTORS (i.e. time rates).

Consider this a major breakthrough in your progress, since NOW you have numbers that can be caluculated and summed to produce target timing schedules. (I how have a Afghani Crack Bubble Hash celebration excuse!)

Oooh that sounds delightful. I wish I had some to celebrate with as well. :stoned:

10 hours daylight (everything on)
7 hours Martian night (half of the Red LEDs and all RedIncs on)
6 hours SID (no light whatsoever)
1 hour Martian night (a daybreak period)

Given that you want the equivalent of 12 hours SID, we can subtract out your actual SID time of 6 hours, so you only need the equivalent (AD) of 6 more SID hours. So, if you are making the spectrum fit the schedule, you'd need an AD spectrum with a Time Factor of arround 8/6 (AD/SID needed in hours), = 1.333. Photoperiodically/Photomorphogenically a larger AD time factor will give you veg results, while an equal AD time factor gives you optimul flowering, and a smaller AD time factor will induce ceasence (and then death) (from too long a night).

It all does seem very reasonable once it makes sense!

I don't know what the time factor is for the combination of light that I'm using, but I'm pretty sure that 50 watts of 660 LED and 50 watts of RedInc together have a factor larger than 1.333, so I chopped two more hours off the Martian Night and added them to SID, so my new schedule is:
10 hours daylight
5 hours Martian night
8 hours SID
1 hour Martian night

Which means I need a time factor of 1.5 from my night spectrum. The math goes like this:
12 hours SID necessary for flowering
-8 hours SID that I now have
= 4 hours SID that need to happen
I have 6 hours (5+1) of AD instead of 4 hours SID, so:
6 / 4 = 1.5

Which means I need my 6 hours of AD light to have a time factor of 1.5 in order to be equivalent to 4 hours of SID. If my plants start flowering, I know that my factor is 1.5 or less, and I'll lengthen the Martian Night (and shorten the SID time) 15 mins at a time to see what the factor actually is. If they don't start flowering, I'll move it the other way and find out what the factor is there.

If I wanted to work the other way, from a known-time-factor spectrum to decide on a schedule, the math would work out like this:
My AD spectrum does have a lot of 660 LED Red which is very slow (probably much more than 2) but it's countered by the RedInc which are much faster (probably less than 1.5), so for this example let's assume it has a factor of 1.8.

Once I've decided on how much daytime and nighttime I want (my choice was 10 hours daytime and 14 hours total nighttime, which I chose out of thin air for this example) I used this equation to figure out how much SID vs AD time I'd need:
SID = ((12*ADR) - TN) / (ADR-1))
ADR = Artificial Darkness Rate, in this case 1.8
TN = Total Nighttime hours, in this case 14

So
SID = ((12*1.8) - 14) / (1.8-1))
SID = ((21.6) - 14) / (.8))
SID = 7.6 / .8
SID = 9.5 hours, which means 4.5 hours of AD time to total 14 hours of nighttime

To check the math:
4.5 hours of AD time divided by 1.8 means we get 2.5 hours of "SID-equivalent work" done in our 4.5 hours of slower AD time.

2.5 hours of "SID-equivalent work" + 9.5 hours of real SID time = 12 hours of real SID work!

If my math here confuses you, just think about it logically. There are 4.5 hours of AD time happening, but they're running slower than SID time, so you're going to need a bigger amount of AD time to replace a smaller amount of SID time. Our AD time (4.5) is bigger than the SID time we're replacing (2.5), so it makes sense.

Excellent observation on the pre-flower time shortenning! I find myself forgetting about stretch as preflower, and without stretching the concept of preflowering losses a lot of significance, other than in terms of how long the early flowering processes take to convert to full flowering.

Yeah Dog, very nice (and quite useful) observation! :thumbsup:

Thanks again Sal for all your input/info/corrections!

[Mother]

Lets start here. How come SOD with far red is not the same time factor as SID with the same amount of far red. How come they are different? let's say the time we are measuring in both (SOD) and (SID) is 12 hours for this example.

Hey Dog, I think you might have just read it wrong...

SOD by default already includes Far Red. SID does not. It is the Far Red, and only the Far Red that makes the difference in the time rates between the two. So, a given length of SOD will be exactly equivalent to the same length of SID if the SID has the same exact amount of Far Red added in.

How did we flower with an (AD) time factor of 11/2 ? ......With alot less blue or no..

I think you're dividing total AD time (11) by total SID time (2), which is not the number you're looking for.
What you need to do is divide the total amount of AD time by the amount of SID time that you're trying to make up.

You need a total of 12 hours of SID or "SID-equivalent work".
If you were running 11 hours of AD time and 2 hours of SID. Subtract the two hours of SID that you already have from the 12 total that you need, and that gives you 10 hours of "SID-equivalent work" that needs to be done by your 11 hours of AD time. So:

11/10 = 1.1

So your spectrum needed to be 1.1 or less, and since you were running RedInc only, you may have been close, because RedInc is fast, and faster means a relatively lower time factor. Remember that Sal said (paraphrasing) "RedInc light is fast, but still not as fast as SID". Which means RedInc light has a factor something larger than 1, but not that much larger. Since you had success with it when you needed light with a factor of 1.1 or less, that seems reasonable that it worked out for you. But since your plants didn't like it indefinitely, the real factor for RedInc is probably larger than 1.1. More data, Dog! Awesome!

If plants outside are running .8 x faster then indoors. How do we speed up our indoor plants .8 to match outdoors.

If you wanted to simply match outdoors, you'd just have to add Far Red (only!) at the same rate as it occurs outdoors (and I have no idea what rate that is). Make sense?

I also realized that none of this takes into account light intensity, and I don't know how that affects the whole relationship. Oy!

[Dogznova]

Thank you mother.. You did it again.... I think I now understand the calculation alot better. I now understand it at least 85% better....My math sucks...

[Dogznova]

So your spectrum needed to be 1.1 or less, and since you were running RedInc only, you may have been close, because RedInc is fast, and faster means a relatively lower time factor. Remember that Sal said (paraphrasing) "RedInc light is fast, but still not as fast as SID". Which means RedInc light has a factor something larger than 1, but not that much larger. Since you had success with it when you needed light with a factor of 1.1 or less, that seems reasonable that it worked out for you. But since your plants didn't like it indefinitely, the real factor for RedInc is probably larger than 1.1. More data, Dog! Awesome!

Yes red inc.s did act differently when we used all 200w of them. no doubt
We will not do that again...LOL

If you wanted to simply match outdoors, you'd just have to add Far Red (only!) at the same rate as it occurs outdoors (and I have no idea what rate that is). Make sense?

Thanks for you time...

[Dogznova]

Hay weezard this is for you....aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa.. This should make up for all the times I miss-spelt Martian... Sorry

[Weezard]

Hay weezard this is for you....aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa.. This should make up for all the times I miss-spelt Martian... Sorry

I'm just jerkin yer chain here.
Gonna be busy for two days now goin' back and inserting all dem aaaaas for ya.:S2:

Aloha,
Weeze
(1966 Chevelle SS 396)

[Dogznova]

Mother, I almost forgot .. Red INC.s when they are real close to the buds start to pull the tops out like cone heads. But the Red CFL's don't do the same thing when they are real close to the buds. Maybe sal knows something about this. I will show this with our week 6 pics.. I have seen this before, but not this much.. It's funny looking to me. But the buds don't seem to be coming out of flowering thou.:thumbsup:

[Dogznova]

Sweet weez you rule...Thanks

[Dogznova]

BTW.... weez I love that car...

[Dogznova]

Ok, so fr speeds up the night (SID). Now we just need to know how fast it makes it and at what level of intensity we need. Also what if one was adding a certain amount of far red in the day time hours. Does it change the (AD) Martian light math or know? Just thinking in the over all 24 hour speed of things.