PARduino

[alienfarts687]

Here's an interesting article for those of you interested in Arduino and PAR readings: https://academic.oup.com/treephys/artic ... 40/2338115

It looks like it's technically possible, which is what I suspected, but I was hoping the quantum (PAR) sensor would be cheaper since Lux sensors are under $10. As you can see in the article, it looks like the sensor alone is $400, so I don't think I'll be building one anytime soon!

[Hydrofood]

I can't help but wonder when the next leap in this tech will be made!
I sure hope it's soon.

[unkle_psycho]

Here's an interesting article for those of you interested in Arduino and PAR readings: https://academic.oup.com/treephys/artic ... 40/2338115

It looks like it's technically possible, which is what I suspected, but I was hoping the quantum (PAR) sensor would be cheaper since Lux sensors are under $10. As you can see in the article, it looks like the sensor alone is $400, so I don't think I'll be building one anytime soon!

I'm hardly an expert, but can lux data be changed to PAR data by a single algorithm? In any software environment it should be quite a short piece of code.
Been thinking of looking at LUX meter price/ quality after I read a discussion in RIU on how *cheap* PAR meters suck.

Are the conversion ratios hard to come by? What kind of quality can be expected from a 300$ PAR meter vs a similar price lux meter, and is a lux meter as directional?

:Edit: Just finished the article. They designed the system because in a natural environment the light levels are continuously changing. With this I could calculate the entire light dose my berry bushes receive at my house and summer house and compare the figures. It would have much less use in a system with less variation, mainly serving as a calculator, kind of like having a extension cable that calculates your total accumulated electricity use.

My government has programs that operate from this basis to make crop ripeness predictions, and we have websites that do the same for wild berries. They are surprisingly accurate, but always complain that they have a low resolution system because they can't do localized measurements, so they can't catch micro climates etc. This should fix that.