Hey folks. I’ve been talking to Ebony about measuring plant fluorescence as an indicator of plant stress, and she suggested posting some information here.
Long story short, I’ve always wanted an objective way of determining the health of my indoor plants – I live in a high-rise, and all I get is dead stuff :\ While reading about some information related to the Rama project, I stumbled upon a processes in which plants are exposed to bright, pulsed light, followed by a measurement of fluorescence. The amount of fluorescence is apparently inversely correlated with CO2 uptake, and CO2 uptake is apparently one the primary indicators of plant health/stress.
I did some research, and learned a lot about photosystems in plants, and what plants do with energy from sunlight, including when there’s an excess of light (they fluoresce and heat up). I uploaded some of the information to the Google repo that I found from reading various papers on Google Scholar and Wikipedia: https://drive.google.com/open?id=0B2f5qRTJ2k4LU1NqdG1jVDdTWUU
While most of the meters used for this kind of measurement cost $1200+, I found the MultispeQ by PhotosynQ when I was searching for some info on similar project where the goal is to create a $400-600 meter (the third link in the doc is to the video of that). The MultispeQ is available for preorder for $600 and includes three types of instruments into a hand-held device. This got me thinking about building something myself, and that’s where all the research started. After sharing with Ebony, she suggested others might be interested in building something like this - maybe even as an extension to the Raman project, though I’m not sure how much overlap there is.
Is anyone interested in this sort of thing?