Cheap light meter IDEA!

[Demosouthpaw]

This weekend I was gifted a small "solar powered dancing flower"

I quickly realized that you can easily remove the solar cell and if you connect a meter to it get a reading in VDC. I have a basic understanding of electricity nothing too fancy. What I noticed is the cell, right under my 6500k lights puts out 1.5v dc under my regular kitchen lights and some flourencet lighting it puts out 1.10v dc. If I cover the cell it puts out nothing. Or a number too small for my meter to read. The idea would be to buy one of these dancing flowers, take it apart and attach a 1.5V led (since the run on mAmps) and when lighting conditions are Ideal you would have a lit LED.

Torn down (not much to take apart lol)

WP_20140309_009.jpg (34.19 KiB) Viewed 1597 times

I was thinking of running over to a hobby store sometime and picking up a small LeD to see if this would work or not. I figured many indoor enthusiasts might find this useful.

[imafan26]

I learned to judge light using your hand shadow.

https://www.orchidsmadeeasy.com/orchids-care/


If you have an older camera with a built in light meter, you can use it to measure light

https://www.rv-orchidworks.com/orchids/o ... -to-bloom/

[applestar]

I installed a couple of free lightmeter apps on my iPhone ... (Opposite of inexpensive I guess )

I'm not really sure of accuracy, but the intensity being inverse square of distance seems to be borne out by the way the meter goes nuts when held close to the tubes and rapidly falls off as the phone is moved away. Cfl bulb puts out considerably less compared to 4ft tubes especially when measured "head on" from the top of the spiral.....

[Demosouthpaw]

I installed a couple of free lightmeter apps on my iPhone ... (Opposite of inexpensive I guess )

I'm not really sure of accuracy, but the intensity being inverse square of distance seems to be borne out by the way the meter goes nuts when held close to the tubes and rapidly falls off as the phone is moved away. Cfl bulb puts out considerably less compared to 4ft tubes especially when measured "head on" from the top of the spiral.....

Most newer phones have photo sensors on them. Its what controls the backlight dim/brightness during the day. I never thought of using an app ill have to check it out!.

[EsmithOrchids]

I use the light meter on my old SLR camera. It has a nice light readout so that you can adjust the apature to take a good photo. I have also downloaded some free iPhone apps that do the same.