Hello,
On the picture in the attachment, on the Y axis, what does the “COUNTS” represent??? What does our sensor detect?? Thank you.
Not sure why the word ‘count’ is used, but your graph shows how “bright” or intense the reading is for a particular wavelength. A high reading indicates that wavelength is being reflected back to the sensor where a low reading indicates that wavelength is either not present or being absorbed by your target.
I’m not familiar with this particular instrument but sometimes ‘counts’ is used for the discrete values from an analog to digital converter. A processor or controller takes these ‘raw counts’ and correlates them to some know standard during the process of calibration.
^piggy-backing on brow and Chris, I would say, in this case, it’s closest to intensity of light. The sensors are testing materials for reflectance, absorption, and emission. So a measure of “How-much-of-a-wavelength-is-seen” makes the most sense.
I use the Triad to measure the intensity of LED grow lights for my Orchids. My intent is to emulate the response from my Apogee MQ-500 PAR meter. The MQ-500 measures light over the 400-700 nm spectrum in micromol/m3-s. The Triad docs say one count is approximately 35 microWatts/cm2. I sum the counts for wavelengths 400-700 nm, multiply by 35, convert to micromol/m3-s, then multiply by a calibration factor to account to for the 35 being an estimate and for other sources of error (diffuser, etc.).