User manual for web users

AiPlantCare web-based tool is an online platform to access to AiPlantCare cloud computing services.

Introduction

The importance of providing a proper environment for plants growth in urban dense context or indoor spaces is twofold: 1) the role of indoor greenery (biophilic design) on well-being and 2) urban horticulture and its benefits toward sustainability.

AiPlantCare is a web-based tool to provide required information for indoor growers, designers and architects, and professionals to evaluate lighting situation for various plant species. This information helps users to plan for the suitable location for a specific plant, reduce the electricity needed for supplementary lighting, and improve the quality of the plants.

AiPlantCare benefits from verified simulation engine (Radiance) running on the cloud. Using such a powerful simulation engine is complicated especially for evaluating lighting for plants, which needs enough skills to tailor the program for such a specific purpose.

AiPlantCare makes it possible to use your smartphone, tablet, or desktop, build your room, and evaluate lighting I there with minimum requirement and background. There is no need for any installation. Your room model can be prepared easily by using a user-friendly modeler online.

Finally by pressing a button your report for a complete year is ready including hourly photosynthetically active radiation (PAR) values and daily light integral (DLI), schedule for using supplementary lighting, shading system, irrigation, ...

How to start?

You may decide first to use a free service or benefits from unlimited professional features by reading the advantages in here. On the landing page, use “Try Now!” option or go to the login page and sign up to benefit from the services.

By starting an account, you can use web-based tools and services, as well as the Rhino API services. Logging in to your account leads you to your Dashboard. A dashboard includes all your projects, plants, and settings. You can always access to your archive of building models and results for post processing.

For the basic features free of charge, no sign up is required. However, your model and final report cannot be retrieved later.

How to create a new project?

Logging in to your account leads you to the Dashboard. Dashboard includes your projects, your selected plants cultivar, general settings, and payments.

To evaluate the suitability of your room for plants some inputs are required including room geometry, size and location of the windows, material, and climate condition.

Under “Projects”, you can start a new project by assigning a name and using either “Modeler” or “Wizard”. Both options guide you through some steps, which provide required inputs. Here you may use one of this options based on the type of your project and the level of details you may need, these modeling options are designed to suit your needs and reduce the level of complexity.

You may need to use these tools once or twice to feel confident:

Wizard is using some ready to use templates and guide you through the process smoothly. You can build any cuboid room geometry with different windows on different sides. If there is a tree in front of your window, you can add that obstacle into your model as well. You can build a balcony and adjust the shape of it. You can model your backyard or model your neighbor’s walls, which cast shadow on your garden. Moreover, you can model a greenhouse with more details.

Modeler is a web-based 3D modeler, which gives you full access to your model and its parameters. The interface is tailored to be easy to use but it might be found a little overwhelming since there is very few things you cannot do with the modeler.

After using “Wizard”, the “Modeler” can be used again for adjusting the geometry of the room and its parameter.

Prepare the model through “Wizard”

For evaluating the suitability of your building, you should model each room geometry separately. “Wizard” guides you through the steps below, which provides required inputs for evaluation process.

Template: A 3D geometry is required for analyzing available lighting precisely. Different templates are prepared including Room, Balcony, Yard, and Greenhouse. Users can pick the one suits better to their room.

Room: This is an enclosed cuboid space and light penetrates through its openings. You can adjust the dimensions of this box and locate the window on any desired side of it, even on the ceiling (skylight).
Balcony: This is a semi-outdoor space and light comes from its open side. The size of the balcony, its orientation, and the size of the overhang may be altered as you wish.
Yard: This is an outdoor space and light comes from everywhere it can. However, in a dense urban context you should consider the size of obstacles surrounding your yard or roof top. The dimensions may be altered as you wish.
Greenhouse: This is a glass box, an enclosed space while light penetrates from every possible side. You can set the dimensions of this box and assign the transmissivity of the glasses.
Shoebox: This is an empty box and you can add what ever you need through wizards steps.

Location: The location (latitude) of your project and its climate condition are needed to be assigned in this step. The simulations are based on the solar geometry (where the sun is in the sky over the course of a year) and sky condition (cloud cover, …). By selecting your project’s location on the map the closest available climatic data (TMY) for your location will be automatically retrieved. Typical meteorological year (TMY) includes historical solar radiation for a year-round period based on the recorded hourly values over a very long period.

Orientation: A north window gets less solar radiation compare a south window (in northern hemisphere). Therefore, it is very important to assign the room and windows orientation correctly. Considering the north direction (normally upward), it is easy to tune the orientation and the location of your room on the map.

Dimensions: According to the selected template the dimensions of a room (width, depth, and height), or yard or balcony can be altered.

Windows: The window-to-wall (WWR) ratio is the percentage of opening area over the total wall area. Above 50% would be considered as large window. The location of the window on the wall can also be adjusted by changing the size of baluster (top or bottom). The size of overhang and each window solar transmissivity can be assigned here.

Solar transmissivity varies in the range of 1 (fully clear) to 0 (fully tinted/dark). For instance, if you have two different windows, the darker can be set with transmissivity of 0.60 and the more transparent one with transmissivity of 0.85. The solar transmissivity of 0.85 means that the 85% of the received solar radiation penetrates through the window.

The main window is assumed on the front side. For adding another window, the desired side should be selected accordingly. Picture shows the front side and if someone looks to the room through your main window, that is the Front side. So, Right and Left sides are respectively on your right hand side and your left hand side. The same way Back and Top side can be selected to place the new window.

Work-plane: The work plane (aka. analysis mesh) is an imaginary plane that you want to evaluate the level of daylighting on that surface. So, it can be a horizontal plane above the floor (normally 80 cm) or a vertical surface close to the wall you want to place a green-wall. The work plane can be either inside the room or outside on the façade surface. Work-plane represents a grid of light sensors where you want to know the available lighting.

These virtual sensor points represents a lux meter or par meter sensor on that exact place and after the calculation, you can get hourly values on each sensor point. The higher the number of sensors the higher resolution in your results and the more required computation power and simulation time. Keep in mind that at least one work plane needs to be defined in your model. Projects without work plane (sensor points) cannot be simulated.

Obstacles (vertical or horizontal): The impact of the surrounding buildings on the available sunlight inside your room is very crucial especially for dense urban context. If you look from your window to the buildings around, you see which part of the sky is blocked by your neighbors or if these buildings cast a shadow on your windows or not. You need to draw a surface (obstacle) on the place of these walls. Simply draw a vertical opaque surface (obstacle) on its footprint by pointing the corners on the map and setting a height and reflectance to the surface. Reflectance can vary in the range of 0 (dark color) to 1 (bright color and reflective). If the building in front of your window has a reflective glazing façade, you need to set a higher reflectance to see the impact of bounced light into your space.

Trees: Similar to obstacles, if there is a tree that casts shadow on your backyard or window, you have the option to model it with the simplified shape. Besides, you may change the shading effect of the tree by setting its opacity. Meaning, if you want to represent a tree with a dense foliage, you can use low transmissivity values (<0.25) and if it allows more light to be passed through, you can define it with higher transmissivity value (>0.75).

Now your model is ready and you need to save it in order to start the lighting analysis. You will be guided back to your dashboard to set up simulations parameters and get it ready to run on the cloud.

Modeler features

General settings and adjusting the room parameters, dimensions, …

Adding new windows and adjust the window size and properties

Adding new workplanes (v or h)

Adding obstacles, trees, objects and assigning properties

Adding advanced objects and complex geometries into the model

It is worth mentioning that modeler runs on your local system resources (RAM and GPU) and your modeling time doesn't cost you anything.

Prepare the project for simulation

After preparing, your model can be found in your dashboard, projects. Select the project you want to evaluate. Here you have the option to duplicate the model and save it as a different name. For instance, you may need this option for trying the same project with different window size. You can also delete the project from your archive list.

You use “edit” option, if you want to edit the model, simulation parameters, or plants set. Without any changes, the default values will be used for simulation parameters. For example, you want to have more sensors in your room and have a higher resolution for your results. By default, it is 1m, which means you have a sensor at every 1m².

But before evaluating the lighting situation for plants in your room, you need to have already some plant species selected in your plants list. To do so, you need to go to the “Plants” tab and find your desired plants from our database which has more than 100,000 different cultivars. The easiest way to find plants is through our favorite shortlisted plants. These are the common plants that people mainly use as houseplants.

After selecting, you need to wait until the selected item appears on the list on the right hand side. Here you have the names of plants and the range of lighting requirements for each one. As you see each species has a very different light requirement and this makes finding the right place in room for that specific plant a little challenging.

Go back to the Projects tab. Here is the place you may want to edit your plants set and specify how many of each plant you want to consider for evaluating this room and find the right place for them.

For running just press the Report button. This pushes your model to our server to do the calculations on the cloud. Based on the simulation parameters and size of your model this may take a few minutes to do all the calculation for every hour in a year and visualize the results for you.

Surface and material settings for Radiance engine

AiPlantCare benefits from Radiance, a verified powerful simulation engine that has been used in building industry for more than 25 years. All the geometries and corresponding material in your model is converted into the formats readable for Radiance.

The opaque surfaces are defined as “plastic” material where the reflectivity value is used for all three RGB channels equally (no color, only gray) with no roughness and specularity. Other obstacles, objects, furniture were treated as opaque surface as well.

The window surfaces are defined as “glass” material where the transmissivity value is converted into transmittance and used for all three RGB channels equally (no color, only gray). The tree canopies are also defined as glass material.

Workplanes are imaginary surfaces and are not considered as real obstacle in you model. the position of sensor points (x,y,z) and the normal vectors will be automatically generated based on the location of the workplanes in your model and the simulation resolution.

Please keep in mind that the work plane should not cover any other surfaces. In this case, that part of the surface will be disappeared as well.

Cloud-based simulation setups

This process may take from few seconds to few minutes regarding to the size of your model, the number of sensor points, and rayTracingQuality choice. This parameter specifies the Radiance simulation parameters. Under the hood, we run a DC method simulation and you can adjust some of these parameters to get a higher quality in your results (by default rayTracingQuality = 1 meaning ' -ab 3 -ad 1024 -ar 1024 -as 128 -aa 0.1').

Processing and visualizing the results interactively

The first page is a simple report which includes your project summary, project name, its location, the weather data which has been used for the predictions.

You can also see the list of plants and their lighting requirements. You also have a 3d viewport of your model and the distribution of natural light on different positions in your room.

The sensors on the work-plane are color-coded based on the annual sunlight available on each point from low-light (in blue) to high-light (in red).

Our algorithm has already suggested a proper place in your room based on the light requirements.

If you want to dig more into the results you can go to the detailed report page. Here you can easily switch the plants in your list and check the possible places in the room.

Daily light integral (DLI) is a key parameter for plants. DLI the optimal range of light received in one day by the plant.

Our goal is to find the best place in the room where the plants get the DLI target more often (DLI-autonomy). The green area shows the points in your room when the optimal range of light is available for most of the year.

Having more light (DLI-exceeded in red) or less light (DLI-supplemental in blue) leads to stress for the plants and increase in electricity cost and should be avoided.

On the right hand side you can see the available DLI for the optimal point (in black) from January to December. By selecting another point on the work-plane you can compare the lighting situation on different points to the optimum point. Using the interactive graphs you can explore your space more and more and find out the other possible solutions.

by looking into monthly breakdown graphs (side by side) you can easily find out the number of days in each month when the plants couldn't get enough light or plants may be under the risk of burning. This will give you a good insight if your plants can grow healthy at the selected position or not.

you may use artificial lighting whenever the natural light is not sufficient. It would be really helpful if we could estimate the annual electricity demand for lighting. Here you just need to select a point on the workplane to get this information. For professionals, the cost of electricity is the major portion of operating cost and these features give you an option to save more energy and money.

At the same time you need to protect your plants from the excessive sunlight. You can also get the number of days when you need to use sun protection or move your plant to another position. Guidelines recommend avoiding PAR values above 500 μmol/m²∙s because it makes stress for the plants and there is a high risk of getting your plants completely burnt and dead.

So that was a brief introduction how to get to start the tool and how to interpret the final results. enjoy your simulations and indoor gardening.

PAR includes the hourly photosynthetically active radiation (PAR, weighted in 400-700 nm range) values (μmol/m².s) for each sensor point. It normally goes from 1 to 8760 hours over a year.
DLI includes the daily light integral (DLI) values (mol/m².day) for each sensor point. DLI expresses the total amount of PAR, which is accumulative on a surface in 24 hours. DLI for each single day over a year can be shown (from 1 to 365 days).

Climate based daylight analysis for plants:

Point in time DLI for plants: daily light integral (DLI) values (mol/m².d) and its distribution on the work plane over the course of a year (365 days). DLI) describes the number of photosynthetically active photons (PAR in 400-700 nm range) that are delivered to the work plane over a 24-hour period. This metric describes very well the available light for plants. Each plant species (cultivar) has a DLI target which growth of that plant can be guaranteed. By comparing DLI available to DLI target the supplementary light requirement can be estimated.
Annual DLI for plants: DLI% index is a sunlight availability metric for plants that corresponds to the percentage of days when DLI target at a point in a space is met by natural light only. This metric also describes the amount of time a space is either: Too Dim (DLIs: supplementary), Well lit (DLIa: acceptable), or Too bright (DLIe: excessive). For this study, desired plant species and the corresponding DLI target should be selected first.
Electricity consumption for supplementary lighting (kWh): The electrical power (watt) and the efficacy of the luminaries for humans (lm/W) and equivalent Photosynthetic Photon Flux Density (PPFD) factor of the lights needs to be specified by the users. PPFD factor shows the equivalent amount of photometric values (illuminance - lux) which can be used actively for photosynthesize in plants.

In a plant centric design, we consider the location of plant(s) in the space. It may be the whole area or a limited area that you consider for indoor growing. The estimation of the total electricity energy then will be done based on the selected sensor point. If the surface you are going to cover with a green wall for example does not receive the same amount of light, the position of your sensor matters more. Then if you locate the sensor in a place darker than the average, the energy consumption is overestimated and vice versa.

For plants, the occupancy schedule is not required since the plants supposed to be there all day long.

The lighting control is based on the available natural light on that specific point. For plants, DLI target range is used as lower and upper limits.

The electrical power (watt) and the equivalent Photosynthetic Photon Flux Density (PPFD) of the grow lights needs to be specified by the users. The PPFD values can be found easily on the grow lights providers’ website or products specifications.

Plants species datasets

For assessing the daylight situation for your plant, it is required to define an optimal range of DLI for plants. This data is available for most commonly used houseplants: Houseplants, Cacti and succulents, Green-walls, Edible, and Purifiers plants.

Our database on the website includes larger number of plants species (+100,000) and a feature to recognize your plant from an image.