Thanks for the update Rick.    

Back to salvaging some switches from some other stuff then. The rest of the kit is awesome, I'm having a play around with it now.

Don't know exactly what the issue was but Wurth is not going to provide the switch kit.

Check this video out. Dave explains it.

http://www.element14.com/community/videos/17179/l/Vertical-Farming-Design-Challenge-Check-In

element14Dave

Hi Dave, I think I got sent an extra capacitor kit instead of the switch kit.

Good point, Jeremy. I think growers often underestimate the importance of spectral quality and light intensity as a role in plant growth. I've experimented with just about every type of horticultural lighting, though and I've seen plenty of impressive results from artificial light sources so don't count them out!  LEDs from various manufacturers are offered in many different spectral distributions depending on the overall needs of the plant and goals of the grower. I'd love to talk more about this and answer questions anyone has about lighting for their systems. -Tim

The two kinds of Chlorophyll found in plants is named A and B (very creative, I know), and they absorb light in the red and blue portions of the spectrum. However, there are many other light-sensitive molecules contained within and used by plants. Some plant hormones that control flowering rely on UV light, some plant hormones that control foliage density rely on IR light, etc. Consequently plants can grow with only red and blue, but they won't look as full/healthy as a plant receiving full-spectrum lighting from the sun. The second major advantage of sunlight is that light intensity (and thus plant energy) decreases with the square of the distance to the source (similar to other energy sources such as sound). So the sun will be equally intense at the top or bottom of a plant, but artificial lighting will be considerably less intense at the bottom of the plant.

Reference wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chlorophyll#/media/File:Chlorophyll_ab_spectra-en.svg

Do we get any advance knowledge of the seeds to be used? Different plants have different needs in terms of optimised design, so the plant type could easily have a dramatic effect on design.

Thanks.

Hi Dan, as far as our LED portfolio is concerned, we offer standard signal and backlight LEDs. All contestants will receive one of our LED Kits with an overview of our LED components.

For any lights or lamps you propably need to get it yourself. Otherwise you can still let the sun do the job!

element14Dave

Thanks Dave, that could be very useful to some contestants.

It's great to see the other frequencies are available as we discovered in the Forget Me Not challenge, 434, 868, and 902 MHz are not available in Australia and 902 MHz in some other countries.

The challenge involves using the supplied kit, but if anyone wants to add additonal RF units, electronichamsters ( Eric ) introduced some very interesting options (covered in his summary)

http://www.element14.com/community/community/design-challenges/forget-me-not/blog/2014/10/22/eric-tsai--final-blog-post

Mark