Using Dimmers to better simulate sunrise/sunset? Is it a thing?

Botany and Cultivation
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This may be a stupid question and I did try to search for it, but didn’t really find something relevant directly to this question.

Note: This came about from trying to understand the plant’s experience in order to design small changes that may have tangible benefits (without increasing costs). I unfortunately don’t have the space to grow right now, so I can’t test this myself, but maybe someone can humor me?

Basically, the question is, has anyone used dimmers to better simulate sunrise and sunset, rather than having the lights go full on/off when beginning ending the light cycle for the day?

It may not make a difference, but if you think about the difference between waking up to light slowly peaking through your blinds vs someone waking you up with an interrogation-esque light. It would definitely negatively effect a person (and create a stress response), but would this also effect plants and create a stress response?

Perhaps having lights dim both at the beginning (slowly ramp up to full brightness) and end of the light cycle (slowly wind down the lighting rather than instant lights out) help reduce a potential stressor we don’t realize is even taking place (because it’s mainly how it’s been done in the past)?

Just curious, if this has already been covered I would appreciate a point in the right direction. I thought maybe this would better mimic the sun (since it doesn’t just pop on and off in nature).

Feel free to shit on this if it’s a dumb/useless question as well. I’m just interested in finding low cost ways to create better environments for plants to express their best potential (and resin).

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I think someone else just posted on here about that question and it doesn’t help the plant. If you want to tinker, play with light spectrum by supplementing your leds in various ways like far red to stimulate Emerson effect.

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Thank you for the reply. Would you happen to know the name of the post or some search terms that may help me find it easier?

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Found this video talking about the Emerson effect What Is The Emerson Effect? - YouTube

Though the guy talking about it just says that he tested it out by using time lapse to observe the plants and didn’t notice a difference (which doesn’t really seem all that scientific or useful).

He also mentioned that this would be silly in an industrial grow (since they are trying to maximize yield and minimize cost), but I wonder if a home grower tried it with clones they are used to growing (and know what they typically get from it) would observe any difference not just in how the plants moved, but in resin production/quality?

Probably nothing further to see here, but I think it’s important to distinguish between whether you’re growing for maximizing weight or resin quality and what can effect the latter (since so much tends to be focused on maximizing weight).

Obviously the best outcome would be to find ways to increase yield AND resin quality, but if you’re just looking to grow the best quality resin, it may come at the expense of bio-mass.

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Sure, led supplements are expensive, use a not insignificant amount of electricity, which makes heat, and all of that hits the power bill. They do make more frost, in my experience. The most tangible benefit is a reduction in days to maturity. I cut my 60 day strains at 50 days, therefore using 1/6th less energy and time.

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I don’t know how many people are using this… but its already a pretty standard function on lighting controls. It has been basically everywhere I have been. Especially in greenhouses - where turning on supplemental lighting was specific to the light available at the time (which is also based on when the sun comes up and down, plus you know…clouds).

I haven’t done any science myself to compare rooms where lights just come on and go off without any transfer time in a large grow.

However - in my home grow, I know that my plants don’t appear to like it when I change things radically. They prefer incremental changes. Mostly the prefer that their environmentals don’t change too much. Cause I’m cheap at home that means I do things a bit more slowly because otherwise things get hotter too fast or colder too fast from the changes that I’m making.

Is this about sunrise and sunset? I suppose… but not really. Its really about controlling the way my utilities work together. Lights on - its warmer, I need more cooling. Lights off - its colder, I need more dehum to prevent moisture from harming my ladies. There’s more science behind what I’m talking about here.

But yeah - you don’t need a “dimmer” you just need a standard light controller. At this point like @Autumn_Ridge_Hemp said you can even get lights that will no only let you “dim” but also let you change the spectrum of light that you are giving your plants (at least with LEDs…)

So if you want to do it, you could you know… have a few tents with separate lights. And even using the SAME lighting controller you could collect all this data and run the tests. Especially if you had clones from the same mother and you were feeding them all using the same controls. Minimizing the variables and doing it FOR SCIENCE.

Please tell us how this adventure goes. <3 I only have one growing space right now… or I might consider doing this FOR SCIENCE myself.

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I wish I could test this out(and I just might this next year). And I might just do so when I manage to prop up a proper indoor grow setup with the essentials/costly equipment/&genetics for my patients and I.

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doesn’t add anything

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I think some lighting controllers will do this via turning on only a few banks at a time vs. all at once. Now you also have to consider the load put on in the (tens of) thousands of watts which would likely blow that resistor faster than a 10 cent hooker on payday.

NOW…As per Eddie Van Halen there is another alternative - how useful it’d be for grow lights is totally debatable since who knows how it’d affect the power supply but…BEHOLD. THE VARIAC!

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The Variac is ‘1’ - He used it to drop his voltage down so he can crank his extremely loud Marshall head in practice situations and get the gain he wanted without making the tone sloppy.

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Essentially you are dropping your voltage a smidge which will in turn give you a bit less power via the variac dial at the top - will it work on grow lights without starting a fire? I HAVE NO IDEA DON’T BLAME ME IF IT DOES BECAUSE MOST POWER SUPPLIES ARE MEANT TO RUN AT A FIXED VOLTAGE BASED ON GEOGRAPHICAL REGION - but your run of the mill ‘dimmer’ is a variable resistor which I have a body count of nearly in the hundreds so I can tell you it may not play too nice with kilowatts

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Great reply. Thank you for taking the time to write this out.

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That’s a bad ass story, thanks for sharing.

I have no clue what the right technology or options are in that realm, so however this effect can be accomplished I think that would be interesting to try. If there were a way to simulate sunrise/sunset with the lights (maybe 15-20 minute ramp up in light/wind down?) I just think it would be better for the plants than the lights going out or turning on (I assume LEDs just go on/off but HPS and other lights may take a warm up/cool down period? No clue on this part), but maybe it makes no difference in their quality of life, I don’t have the answers (which is why I asked this question in the first place).

My main goal is to find little things like this that don’t take much money, but just some thinking in the original design to help give plants a better environment to express their best potential resin quality.

Another example is instead of having separate pots, using shared beds for the same phenos to allow them to build a better network for pest detection, sharing of resources, and social connection.

Since they don’t usually exist in nature alone or segregated underneath the soil, it would make sense that they would thrive more when they are in shared beds, building a larger mycelium network and sharing resources (and communicating with each other).

Even though many people have plants right next to each other, often touching, it seems like a weird thing to basically keep them in solitary confinement when it comes to their soil. I understand that it’s more convenient for the growers, but what are we losing for this “convenience”?

I read a study that showed a 13% increase in plants in shared beds vs solo pots with all other factors being the same. Unfortunately, they didn’t have test results to see if they expressed different levels of cannabinoids or terpenes, but if the quality is at least the same as solo pots, then it makes sense to design a grow with this in mind to get an extra 13% for the loss of convenience of solo pots.

Anyway, thanks for taking the time to post your thoughts, I appreciate it.

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For plants, there is more going on during sunrise and sunset than just the obvious change in light intensity. For example, when the sun rises each day the ratio of incident red-light photons to incident far-red-light photons increases dramatically (i.e., high R/FR ratio). The opposite is true for sunset, the ratio of R-to-FR light photons drops notably as darkness occurs (ie, low R/FR ratio). In other words, sunrise and sunset is a combination of changes in light intensity with concomitant changes in the color spectrum of incident light. Diurnal changes in temperature are also relevant here.

These daily spectral changes are perceived by all plants as important signals for diurnal and circadian timing. Among other things, these two daily signals entrain the plants internal daily clock. Moreover, when perceived, these daily light spectral cues lead to massive shifts in gene expression, metabolism, and physiology as the plant resets its metabolism and physiology for the oncoming day (or the oncoming night).

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That’s a great post, thank you for taking the time to write that out.

Do you think current light technology/methods for indoor take this into account?

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Good question. Unfortunately, most do not.

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Yield comparison?

It’s hard for me to imagine not losing significant yield by cutting that many days.

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@SpaceChimp84
For your stated purpose, you might be better off manipulating the light spectrum at different points in the plants life cycle, instead of manipulating light intensity at the beginning and end of each day. Lots of cannabis industry folks are now investigating light spectral changes as a strategy to manipulate cannabis plant secondary metabolism (including terpenes and cannabinoids). Red, far-red, blue, and UV light photons are most relevant here, as is intensity and the timing of the R, FR, B, or UV light supplements. The reason this approach is yielding positive results is because nearly all plant secondary metabolism responds to light spectral clues. On the flip side, there are always trade offs when we leverage strategies like this one: driving the production of specific metabolites up often drives crop yields down.

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Would it be possible to do both? Also, would adding an extra 15-20 minutes to the cycle (rather than cutting into it) cause any issues? Why not manipulate light spectrums as well as try to modulate intensity for short periods at the start/end of cycles to try and better mimic that natural sunrise/sunset period?

There’s always a trade off, but the way I see it, unless you are looking to be some giant scale operation, in the future value will be driven more by quality than quantity (as well as variety). I’m looking pretty far into the future where big AG has taken over the volume/low price market, and the way to have a smaller grow will be based on quality/variety for craft level products.

Obviously if you can maximize yield AND quality you’ve found the holy grail, but unlike most that are just seeing dollar signs (or are part of operations just struggling to survive) I think it’s more interesting to think on what you can do on a smaller sale that will be impossible for large scale operations to pull off. I’m more interested in finding the line where quality drops based on the scale and inching back to that line in order to prioritize quality above all else (and try to find what scale works best for it, rather than having to scale until the wheels fall off).

I’m thinking of it like craft beer where when prohibition first ended there were a ton a small operations that eventually got taken over/put out of business by bigger/more efficient operations, then for a long time there was basically piss water with different labels on it until people started making their own small batch stuff that tasted way better. Eventually leading to small craft brews with their own operations/tap rooms, which just further increased the demand for these products (which most consumers didn’t know they were a thing until they started gaining traction).

Now craft beer is more mainstream and accepted, which is where I see cannabis going in the future. For now the demand for the top quality isn’t what it needs to be, but it will grow as people get used to the boof and the novelty of buying weed from a store wears off, and they start looking more for quality than quantity. Right now it’s not enough, but there will not only be a massive increase in overall cannabis users in the next 10-20 years, but more and more of them will go through the same experience we had (I started off smoking brick weed in high school) and their tastes/understanding of what exists will expand.

Much like shitty domestic beers, mass produced boof will always be a thing and have its market, but the craft market is going to continue to expand in the future, so I want to design things that I would actually want to be a part of long term (and not just a cash grab in industrial cannabis like we’ve seen over these years of rec weed).

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That’s one way to look at it, but it’s based on prohibition mindset (most yield for the least money).

If you can save energy and time and get something decent, you can use that time and energy somewhere else (or use it to do additional grows to make up for the yield difference).

I understand why so many people filter everything through yields, but that’s based on survival and economics, not on making the best quality resin. I want to take a different view of it, not based on trying to survive in the current markets (which are a shitshow), but how to thrive in the future based on where cannabis will eventually go in the mainstream.

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People that run businesses always need to focus on metrics that matter to the bottom line. yield, quality, efficiency, etc. Hobby and research often look at things differently.

I don’t disagree with anything you are trying to communicate but the statement was made that I cut 10 days therefore using 1/6th less energy (less than that factoring veg). I feel that statement is not complete without results data in both yield and quality. Unhealthy plants finish faster and I’ve seen great resin still come off of something that was grown poorly.

It’s absolutely not the only metric that matters, but yield always matters; even if you only care about the resin produced.

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Honestly I don’t think it reduces yield. I don’t have the resources to run a real side by side experiment, but I don’t see the speed boost of far red coming at a yield cost. Time will tell as more research is conducted.

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