Solar Calc

Solar Calc: Determine light intensity & color, humidity, and temperature for a given location.

Simulating weather gives the 1975-2000 25 year average for a given location, or custom weather files can be used

download Solar Calc 3.1.  You need to have Java runtime installed.

Settings (email Kurt.Spokas@ARS.USDA.GOV)

We usually go with the defaults which are set to our chamber settings.

Selection the location, Sweden, Spain, Chicago or a custom GPS coordinates

Light Bank 1 = White

Light Bank 2 = Far Red

Light Bank 3 = Blue

Light Bank 4 = Red

We use time step 5min

Perl script to send signals

The solarcalc output file must be named "current_light_settings.csv" as it will be transfered to the server in the appropriate directory for the appropriate chamber.

End Date should be end of the experiment in the simulated field season.

Incubator Date, is to match the current time of year, eg today if you want to start now.

We usually set Sweden to 2 months ahead of Spain in the spring, and perhaps 2 months behind in the fall

For example for spring, we set start date to 3/1/08 for Spain and 5/1/08 for Sweden

end date to 12/31/08

and Incubator data for would be today's data

This should give us nice Spring conditions

Click Update options and then File Run Model to generate the output table.

Move the solarcal file "current_light_settings.csv" to the correct chamber folder on natural.uchicago.edu

NB- if you are generating your own program files in excel, the dates must be in the format mm/dd/yyyy (currently chamber 3 and 4 also can use mm/dd/yy but not light1&2)

Also, sometimes excel for mac adds weird endlines that can cause errors. Once uploaded, open the files in nano and add a space to the first line then delete the space.

FINALLY, the script will run the first line which is greater than the actual time. Example: if time 9 AM lights: on/ time:11 PM lights off the program will turn the lights off after 9 AM

INSTEAD

9 AM lights: on/10:59 PM lights:on/11 PM lights: off should be used.

/home/chamber/light1  

/home/chamber/light2

/home/chamber/chamber3

/home/chamber/chamber4

It will start after 1 hour when the program resets. 

The output files are automatically generated as:

/home/chamber/light1/output.txt

/home/chamber/light2/output.txt

/home/chamber/chamber3/output.txt

/home/chamber/chamber4/output.txt