3 on/9off utilizing DIY 730nm PFR pontoon and a tentacle of light

Very cool! I really like how you utilized a microboard to control the pontoons. Do you have plans for the audio and video ports that you can publicly share here?

no plans for audio/video or camera at the moment - definitely might add a few sensors in the future (for water level and such). I'm in the process of converting my main cab to water top-off only situation so I may want to monitor the water level in the res. At present, i'm just waiting to see if this test cab is going to go full flower or whether I'm going to have to start mucking with the light schedule.

This will become an environmental controller when it's all done. Curious what's going to trigger the 730's?

chazbolin said:

This will become an environmental controller when it's all done. Curious what's going to trigger the 730's?

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right now, i'm using 2 of the 8 channels in the relay. Channel 1 is main lights, channel 2 is 730nm. I'm just using 730nm for the 'sunset' flash, so when I turn the main relay off, i turn the 730nm on for 7 minutes. nothing triggers it except for the fact that main lights are turning off. I'm just accelerating the plant's lights out switch.

I PROBABLY started about this backwards in that I should have started with a longer dark period and dialed it back. After examining a few other plants of the same type that I keep in veg, i've determined that it's normal for this strain to throw some pistils in veg. Also, it's been 11 days (22 pdays) and although I've seen growth, i'm not seeing any bud sites or anything to indicate it has transitioned to flower.

So, next steps. The big appeal of 3on/9off to me was that the total of 12 hours was a clean 1/2 of a 24 hr cycle. Since I'm going to need to adjust it (at least to initiate flowering), I'm going to go ahead and add an hour to both parts of the cycle (4on, 10 off).

You tinkering with the dark period makes sense the question is why are you tinkering with the light period. 6on 10off sounds like a better experiment or even 15on 9off.

well, i already know of others claiming to have decent outcome from shorter light and it hastens the flowering period. There are a lot of people who grow just for themselves for which a shorter flower period would be a real benefit.

too many variables in one experiment - something went south with the flooded/aerated bucket and the plant died. Will replace with clone and start @ 4/10

new clone, starting @ 4 on / 11 off - it should flip with 11 dark hours and the 730nm, but we'll see

I think I've got enough pistils congregating to say I'm in flower finally - I'll try and find time to snap a pic tomorrow.

grabbed a quick pic during lights on this morning

this thread makes my head ache

20 days into 4/11, doesn't seem like it's maturing any faster than normal. Perhaps more light is needed - we'll continue and see how things go:

any general comments on the health, maturity, growth patterns, etc is appreciated - I truly only have a few grows under my belt and I'm horribly lazy about documenting so I don't have a good frame of reference for this plant.

26 days into 4/11

I wish I had more grows so I could comment... but I find this experiment fascinating. Looks quite fluffy for almost 4 weeks, but not under that lightcycle I guess. Are you running the same clone under 12/12 to compare?

vladimiroslav said:

I wish I had more grows so I could comment... but I find this experiment fascinating. Looks quite fluffy for almost 4 weeks, but not under that lightcycle I guess. Are you running the same clone under 12/12 to compare?

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well, I'm not an efficient 'scientist'. Yes, I'm running the same clone under 12/12, but I wasn't smart enough to start one under 12/12 at the same time, so I have no direct comparison. I do have some of this clone that will finish soon, under similar, but not the exact same lighting. So, the one decent comparison I'll have is time-to-finish. Other than that, I gotta get my experimental parameters in order the next round so that I can gain more information per trial.

I do have another clone that went under a different set of lights (about 100W of red/blue and 150W of COB white (crees and bridgelux). It's 12/12, and it's roughly 1 week behind my experimental clone in terms of 24hr days in flower lighting scheme. It appears very close in maturity to my 4/11 clone right now. Now, I know there are too many variables to say much about it, but overall I'm not seeing that my short-photoperiod light schedule is accelerating maturity yet.

Given the results as they stand today, my next experiment I'll probably start at 6/12, wait for obvious flower signs, and slowly move toward 8/10 in 5 or 10 minute increments. I'll have to re-code the lighting script but i think I have that figured out. I'll move to using 'at' instead of 'cron' for scheduling

26 daze....Now i know this is with a different light source and different genetix...but it might give a little of comparison with your 4/11

thanks Chronikool. Bottom line is I don't believe the plant is maturing any faster than normal at this point. I'll finish it out because I want to see if that changes in the latter half of flower or not. The good stuff is that the plant is happy and healthy despite the odd schedule.