I have been doing some research to do the lighting of the plants effectively. They are called plant grow lights to name it.
I came across many new terms and methods used to illuminate plants Indore or even in space.
The plants grow with photons(light particles) being thrown on them at constant or varying intensity depending on their needs.
Light intensity or how densely packed light is with Photons is measured with Mico-moles per meter square per seconds or
PPFD(Photosynthetic Photon Flux density).
The intense light has high PPFD while the less intense light has lower PPFD. For example, During a bright day, the sun's PPFD
hitting the earth is around 1000, during sundown or evening, it is around or between 500-1000 and in a dark night close to zero.
The following chart explains the relationship between DLI(Daily Light Integral) and PPFD. DLI describes the relationship between the
photosynthetically active photos that hit the particular surface.
The table has a list of some of the common plants and their DLI requirements.
For example, you are growing Cucumber which needs around ~25 DLI.
Your grow light produces 500 PPFD at 18" from the plant according to your grow light PPFD chart/light footprint.
If the lamp's distance is increased to 20" from the plant, it produces 400 PPFD at the canopy.
If the lamp is lowered to 15", it's producing 700 PPFD.
By looking at the chart we see that ~25 DLI is achieved by exposing the plant to 500 PPFD over 14 hours but also when exposing
the plant to 400 PPFD over 17 hours or 700 PPFD over 10 hours.
Choose a combination that fits both your grow set up but also your plant's minimum and maximum PPFD limits. Very high PPFD levels over a short duration of time or very low PPFD levels over a long duration of time are rarely ideal for good growth.
I ordered RGB LED's to have control over the colour and needs of the light of the plants. I would like to use Arduino's to have a switching and light settings of the LED's
