An adaptive light supplement control method and system for a home vegetable growing rack
By using an adaptive supplemental lighting control method, the problems of insufficient light and high power consumption in home vegetable growing racks have been solved, achieving precise light control and efficient planting, thereby improving vegetable quality and planting success rate.
Patent Information
- Authority / Receiving Office
- CN · China
- Patent Type
- Applications(China)
- Current Assignee / Owner
- BEIJING BAHUANG TECH CO LTD
- Filing Date
- 2026-04-09
- Publication Date
- 2026-05-29
AI Technical Summary
Home vegetable growing racks face problems such as insufficient and unstable light, high power consumption, and inaccurate light control, resulting in low planting success rates, poor vegetable quality, and difficulty for ordinary users to accurately control light.
An adaptive supplementary lighting control method is adopted. By setting the control cycle and the target total illumination time, and combining it with real-time detection of ambient light intensity, the supplementary lighting start and stop are dynamically adjusted to ensure that the cumulative effective illumination time reaches the target and adapt to different lighting environments.
It achieves precise light control, reduces energy consumption, improves planting success rate and vegetable quality, adapts to different light environments, and allows you to grow high-quality organic vegetables without professional knowledge.
Smart Images
Figure CN122121012A_ABST
Abstract
Description
Technical Field
[0001] This invention relates to the field of home planting equipment technology, specifically to an adaptive supplemental lighting control method and system for home vegetable planting racks. Background Technology
[0002] As people pay more attention to healthy eating and food safety, organic and pollution-free vegetables are becoming increasingly popular among households. However, organic vegetables on the market are generally expensive, and long-term purchases can significantly increase household living costs. At the same time, the sources of vegetables on the market are complex and certification information is not transparent, making it difficult for consumers to feel completely at ease. In fact, there are frequent cases of buying counterfeit organic vegetables, making it impossible to truly guarantee the safety and freshness of vegetables.
[0003] Therefore, more and more families are choosing to use multi-tiered vegetable growing racks on their balconies or indoors to grow leafy vegetables such as bok choy, lettuce, cilantro, and large-leafed wood ear fungus, as well as flowering stalks such as broccoli and cauliflower, and gourds such as zucchini, so they can pick and eat them immediately, ensuring the safety and health of their vegetables from the source. However, for a long time, home vegetable growing has faced a core problem that is difficult to solve: indoor environments in homes generally suffer from insufficient and unstable lighting, requiring supplemental lighting equipment to ensure the normal growth of vegetables. However, ordinary family users lack professional planting knowledge and cannot accurately control the light, resulting in a low success rate of vegetable growing.
[0004] Most existing home vegetable racks use simple timer controls for supplemental lighting, either keeping them on continuously or switching them on and off at fixed times, without automatically adjusting to the intensity of natural ambient light. Continuous supplemental lighting can lead to excessive power consumption and heat generation in the lamps, affecting the normal growth of vegetables and causing problems such as excessive vegetative growth and weak growth. On the other hand, simple intermittent supplemental lighting cannot guarantee that the total amount of light within a cycle will meet the standard, resulting in slow vegetable growth, low yield, and poor taste.
[0005] In summary, the problem of "long-term need for organic vegetables but facing high prices, concerns about safety, and the risk of buying counterfeit products, while failing to grow vegetables at home due to the inability to precisely control light and lack of professional knowledge" has long plagued family users. Currently, there is a lack of lightweight, energy-saving, and adaptive supplemental lighting solutions on the market that are specifically designed for home vegetable growing racks and can effectively solve these problems. Summary of the Invention
[0006] To address the problems of high power consumption, uneven lighting, and difficulty in accurately controlling total light intensity in existing home vegetable rack supplemental lighting methods, and to completely resolve the long-standing difficulties faced by home users who "long need organic vegetables but face high prices, concerns about safety, and the risk of buying counterfeit products, while failing to successfully grow vegetables themselves due to a lack of precise light control and professional knowledge," this invention provides an adaptive supplemental lighting control method and system for home vegetable growing racks. While ensuring the total light intensity required for vegetables, it achieves flexible, energy-saving, and more home-growing-friendly supplemental lighting control, allowing users to easily grow safe and fresh organic vegetables without requiring professional planting and light control knowledge.
[0007] 1. Adaptive supplemental lighting control method An adaptive supplemental lighting control method for home vegetable growing racks, characterized by comprising: Set the control period T and the continuously adjustable total duration of target illumination t1, where the value of t1 ranges from 0.2×T to 0.8×T; Real-time detection of ambient light intensity, and cumulative calculation of the effective illumination duration formed by natural light and supplementary light within the current cycle; The remaining supplemental lighting time is calculated based on the accumulated effective illumination time, and the remaining time of this cycle is calculated based on the running time of the current cycle. Based on the remaining time of this cycle and the remaining duration of supplemental lighting, supplemental lighting will be turned on as appropriate within the cycle. When the effective illumination duration reaches the target total illumination duration t1, the supplemental lighting is stopped.
[0008] 2. Adaptive supplemental lighting control system An adaptive supplemental lighting control system for a home vegetable growing rack includes: a power module, a light detection module, a control module, and a supplemental lighting module; the power module, the light detection module, and the supplemental lighting module are electrically connected to the control module respectively; The control module is a chip with computing, control and data acquisition functions, or a combination of multiple chips with computing, drive control and data acquisition functions respectively. The control module is configured as follows: Set the period T, and set the continuously adjustable total duration of target illumination t1, where the value of t1 ranges from 0.2×T to 0.8×T; Real-time detection of ambient light intensity, and cumulative effective illumination duration formed by natural light and supplementary light within a period; Based on the remaining time of this cycle and the remaining duration of supplemental lighting required, the supplemental lighting module is adaptively started and stopped according to the ambient light intensity. When the effective illumination duration reaches t1, the supplementary lighting module is turned off.
[0009] 3. Preferred Implementation Method A further preferred embodiment of the present invention includes: Throughout the entire control cycle, natural light is prioritized, and supplementary lighting is adaptively started and stopped based on the ambient light intensity: if the ambient light intensity reaches the effective light threshold, supplementary lighting is paused; if the ambient light intensity is lower than the effective light threshold, supplementary lighting is resumed until the total effective light duration reaches t1.
[0010] And / or, perform supplemental lighting only during periods when the ambient light intensity is below a preset light threshold at night. Attached Figure Description
[0011] Figure 1 System Block Diagram 1— Power supply module, 2— Light detection module, 3— Control module, 4— Supplemental lighting module. Detailed Implementation
[0012] As shown in the system block diagram in Figure 1, this system consists of a power supply module 1, a light detection module 2, a control module 3, and a supplementary lighting module 4. The power supply module 1, light detection module 2, and supplementary lighting module 4 are all electrically connected to the control module 3.
[0013] In this invention, a time period of duration T is used as a control cycle, for example, T is chosen as 24 hours. Within the cycle, the control module 3 collects and detects the ambient light intensity in real time through the light detection module 2, and accumulates the duration of natural light and supplementary light that reach the effective light intensity threshold to form the total effective light duration. Based on the set target total light duration t1 and the accumulated total effective light duration, the remaining supplementary light duration is calculated; combined with the current cycle's running time, the remaining time of this cycle is determined. Based on the remaining time and the remaining supplementary light duration, the control module 3 dynamically selects the supplementary light timing throughout the entire cycle and activates the supplementary light module 4 to provide supplementary light.
[0014] In one embodiment, supplementary lighting is adaptively started and stopped based on ambient light intensity throughout the entire control cycle: supplementary lighting is paused when the ambient light intensity reaches the effective light threshold; supplementary lighting is resumed when the ambient light intensity is below the effective light threshold. By real-time detection and dynamic start / stop, natural light is maximized, and supplementary lighting is only activated when there is insufficient light, ensuring that the total effective light duration stably reaches the target total light duration t1 before the end of the cycle. This adapts to different placement locations such as indoors, balconies, and outdoors, as well as scenarios with unstable lighting due to different balcony orientations such as south, north, and east / west.
[0015] In another embodiment, the system only provides supplemental lighting during periods when the ambient light intensity is below a preset nighttime threshold, further reducing energy consumption and improving the user experience.
[0016] When the total effective illumination duration reaches the target total illumination duration t1, the system automatically stops supplemental lighting and completes the illumination control for this cycle.
[0017] This invention is applicable to indoor and outdoor vegetable growing, including home balconies and multi-layer indoor vegetable racks. Vegetables grown include, but are not limited to: leafy vegetables such as bok choy, lettuce, cilantro, and large-leaf Malabar spinach; flowering vegetables such as broccoli and cauliflower; and gourds such as zucchini. This invention aims to solve problems faced by home users, such as high costs, difficulty in ensuring the safety of organic vegetables, significant differences in indoor and outdoor light due to varying balcony orientations, difficulty in controlling light, and low success rates in cultivation. It enables ordinary families to stably and efficiently cultivate fresh and safe organic vegetables without requiring professional planting knowledge.
[0018] The photosynthesis of the aforementioned vegetables exhibits physiological characteristics of rapid light response and a relatively long dark response, thus eliminating the need for continuous, uninterrupted light. Through the specific implementation methods described above, this invention demonstrates significant and clear beneficial effects compared to existing supplemental lighting technologies for home vegetable cultivation, as detailed below: 1. High precision adaptive supplemental lighting solves the core defects of existing technologies such as "fixed-duration supplemental lighting" and "ignoring natural light"—Existing home supplemental lighting devices mostly use fixed-time on / off supplemental lighting, which cannot be dynamically adjusted according to the intensity of natural light on the day, balcony orientation, indoor and outdoor location. This easily leads to problems such as insufficient light causing excessive vegetative growth and low yield, or excessive light causing energy waste and overheating of lamps that damage plants. This invention accumulates the total effective light duration of natural light and supplemental lighting, and dynamically selects supplemental lighting based on the remaining time of the cycle. It can accurately match the target total light duration t1 required for vegetable growth, and maximize the use of natural light, fundamentally avoiding the problems of insufficient or excessive light, ensuring that vegetables grow vigorously and have stable quality, and significantly improving the success rate of home planting and the quality of vegetable output.
[0019] 2. Low power consumption and high reliability, suitable for home use needs – This invention adopts a combination strategy of “intermittent supplemental lighting + continuous supplemental lighting at the end of the cycle”, combined with dynamic start and stop supplemental lighting based on ambient light intensity, which can effectively reduce energy consumption; at the same time, the design of continuous supplemental lighting at the end of the cycle effectively avoids problems such as different orientations of family balconies, large differences in indoor and outdoor lighting, and insufficient natural light on cloudy or rainy days, ensuring that the total daily lighting meets the standard. The overall structure of the solution is simple and easy to implement, requiring no complex hardware modifications, and is compatible with various indoor, balcony, and outdoor multi-layer vegetable planting racks, with high long-term operational reliability.
[0020] 3. No professional operation required, greatly improving the convenience of home gardening – Addressing the pain point that existing supplemental lighting technologies require users to have professional light management knowledge and manually adjust the duration / intensity of supplemental lighting, this invention operates entirely automatically. Users only need to preset the cycle T and the target total light duration t1 (which can be flexibly adjusted according to the type of vegetables being grown). No subsequent intervention is required to achieve precise supplemental lighting, completely solving the problem that ordinary home users do not know how to control light or do not control light accurately due to different balcony orientations and indoor and outdoor environments, thus lowering the threshold for home organic vegetable gardening.
[0021] 4. Adapting to the physiological characteristics of vegetables and enhancing their natural quality – Combining the physiological characteristics of leafy vegetables and cucurbits, which have a rapid light response and a longer dark response, a reasonable intermittent supplemental lighting method is adopted. This allows the plants to complete the light response during periods of light exposure and the dark response and nutrient accumulation during periods of light remission. This avoids problems such as excessive vegetative growth and deterioration in taste caused by continuous light exposure, resulting in vegetables that grow vigorously and are closer to their natural growth state. The vegetables cultivated have a taste and nutritional value that are closer to naturally grown organic vegetables, further meeting the needs of family users for safe and high-quality organic vegetables.
[0022] In summary, this invention precisely addresses the core and difficult problems that have long plagued home vegetable growing enthusiasts and related practitioners. More importantly, it completely fulfills the urgent desire of people to eat safe, reliable, and high-quality organic vegetables, which they have long found difficult to achieve on their own.
[0023] Organic vegetable cultivation in home settings generally suffers from high costs and difficulty in ensuring safety. In particular, the different orientations of balconies, the large differences in indoor and outdoor lighting, the lack of intelligent and precise supplemental lighting control, high energy consumption, the need for professional knowledge, and the difficulty for ordinary users to operate, coupled with the inability to adapt to the physiological characteristics of vegetables, result in low success rates and poor vegetable quality. These are pain points that people have long wanted to solve but have not yet been able to completely overcome with existing technologies.
[0024] This invention achieves multiple goals in one go—intelligent supplemental lighting, low energy consumption, convenient operation, and quality improvement—through a simple and efficient technical solution. It fills the gap in existing household vegetable supplemental lighting technology, allowing ordinary families to easily cultivate high-quality organic vegetables that are safe to eat without any professional skills, simply by planting, watering, and fertilizing. This truly meets people's long-term core demand for safe and healthy food.
[0025] The above description is merely an exemplary description of the present invention and should not be construed as limiting the scope of protection of the present invention. The core technology of the present invention lies in dynamically selecting a supplementary lighting strategy by accumulating the total duration of natural light and supplementary lighting, combined with the remaining time. This allows for adaptation to various indoor, balcony, and outdoor vegetable rack structures with different orientations, achieving energy-saving, intelligent, easy-to-implement, and highly reliable supplementary lighting control.
Claims
1. An adaptive supplemental lighting control method for home vegetable growing racks, characterized in that, include: Set the control period T and the continuously adjustable total target illumination duration t1, where t1 ranges from 0.2×T to 0.8×T; Real-time detection of ambient light intensity, and cumulative effective illumination duration formed by natural light and supplementary light within the current cycle; The remaining supplemental lighting time is calculated based on the accumulated effective illumination time, and the remaining time of this cycle is calculated based on the running time of the current cycle. Based on the remaining time of this cycle and the remaining duration of supplemental lighting, supplemental lighting will be turned on as appropriate within the cycle. When the effective illumination duration reaches the target total illumination duration t1, the supplemental lighting is stopped.
2. The adaptive supplemental lighting control method for home vegetable growing racks according to claim 1, characterized in that: During supplemental lighting, the supplemental lighting is automatically turned on and off according to the ambient light intensity. Supplemental lighting should be paused when the ambient light intensity reaches the effective light threshold. Supplemental lighting is restored when the ambient light intensity is below the effective light threshold. Until the effective illumination duration of the current cycle reaches t1.
3. The adaptive supplemental lighting control method for home vegetable growing racks according to claim 1, characterized in that, Supplemental lighting is only activated during periods when the ambient light intensity is below a preset nighttime threshold.
4. An adaptive supplemental lighting control system for home vegetable growing racks, characterized in that, include: The system includes a power supply module (1), a light detection module (2), a control module (3), and a supplementary lighting module (4); the power supply module (1), the light detection module (2), and the supplementary lighting module (4) are electrically connected to the control module (3), respectively. The control module is configured to perform the method according to any one of claims 1 to 3.