Anyway, great project and worth pushing beyond being a "toy project" imo. But like few other commenters - seeing LEDs you used immediately rubbed me the wrong way.
I tend to seed my peppers in Dec/Jan (in Central Europe), ~1.5-2 months before you would normally do it. Without proper growlights and FANs they would get too tall before releasing leaves and have "leggy", too thin stem, to be moved to windy outdoors in Apr/May. These kinds of plants grow too tall if they don't "detect" proper [sun]light and don't spawn leaves since there's no light required for photosynthesis at given height.
My use-case (leggy, thin stems that break under outdoor wind) isn't translatable to yours but my point here is: having a set of dedicated red and blue LEDs with certain wavelenghts (red 630nm-660nm, blue 450-470nm, depending on plant species) is the key to emulate natural sunglight. Other wavelenghts are cool for decorative purposes but it's still "darkness" for plants. I used to buy small PCBs and LEDs dedicated for soldering together with reds and blues of different wavelenghts ratio one requires but nowadays I'm going mostly with ready-to-use grow lamps as I grow rather not that demanding plants.
Your project is great, shows your dedication and already doesn't at all seem like a "toy project". I'd love to see it extended to different kinds of plants!
Where? A: Just above the paragraph about not using it to monitor triffids.
There are some hints here that this is just a bit of light-hearted fun.
> Where?
At the top, just below[0] the title.
Anyway, great project and worth pushing beyond being a "toy project" imo. But like few other commenters - seeing LEDs you used immediately rubbed me the wrong way.
I tend to seed my peppers in Dec/Jan (in Central Europe), ~1.5-2 months before you would normally do it. Without proper growlights and FANs they would get too tall before releasing leaves and have "leggy", too thin stem, to be moved to windy outdoors in Apr/May. These kinds of plants grow too tall if they don't "detect" proper [sun]light and don't spawn leaves since there's no light required for photosynthesis at given height.
My use-case (leggy, thin stems that break under outdoor wind) isn't translatable to yours but my point here is: having a set of dedicated red and blue LEDs with certain wavelenghts (red 630nm-660nm, blue 450-470nm, depending on plant species) is the key to emulate natural sunglight. Other wavelenghts are cool for decorative purposes but it's still "darkness" for plants. I used to buy small PCBs and LEDs dedicated for soldering together with reds and blues of different wavelenghts ratio one requires but nowadays I'm going mostly with ready-to-use grow lamps as I grow rather not that demanding plants.
Your project is great, shows your dedication and already doesn't at all seem like a "toy project". I'd love to see it extended to different kinds of plants!
[0] https://github.com/blackrabbit17/xenolab/blob/129af07788909e...