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!