“Our parent company ETC has a tradition of excellent customer service, multispectral lighting, high levels of uniformity and advanced controls,” says Yan Ren-Butcher, Horticultural Lighting Consulting Specialist with RAYN Growing Systems.
RAYN Growing Systems was established roughly five years ago, with its parent company ETC being a leading provider of live entertainment and architectural lighting solutions around the world. Founded in 1975 and working with entertainment companies like Disney, ETC was one of the first companies to develop end-to-end dynamic lighting systems with advanced controls and spectral tunability. Through the creation of RAYN Growing Systems, ETC is bringing 40+ years of experience in dynamic lighting to the horticultural industry.
RAYN currently offers four lighting systems. Its Alina light fixtures are designed for photobiological research in shelving systems or suspended wire applications. The luminaires have six individually controllable colors, making it an ideal fixture for fundamental lighting research. The company also has its Rosa luminaires with up to eleven controllable wavebands, each with high-resolution, stepless dimming from 0 to 100%. RAYN’s Fotono luminaires were designed to be a 1:1 HPS replacement with the ability to mimic sunrises and sunsets, tune the spectrum and adjust the output in response to natural sunlight. Finally, RAYN’s Lyda light fixtures are a lightweight, bar lighting solution for greenhouses and can be installed overhead or as an interlighting solution. To control its light fixtures, RAYN Growing Systems developed its Syrcadia software, which can be used from a computer or through the RAYN Touch controller. The RAYN Touch controller offers granular spectral control and advanced scheduling from aself-contained, easy-to-use touch screen installed in the production area.
Interest in spectral tunability a function of ROI and growing system
RAYN Growing Systems has focused on the North American and European markets and already has a sales and technical office in Europe. The company collaborates on research with Ghent University in Belgium and with the USDA Agricultural Research Service, among other research centers and universities.
“For research, they are more concerned with fundamental research than scaling, whereas commercial operations are more concerned with the ROI, efficacy and having something that is easy to work with. It is always a trade-off between spectrum and efficacy,” says Yan.
For this reason, RAYN’s greenhouse lighting (which was launched in 2022) has a little less spectral flexibility than its research modules. As greenhouse lighting is supplemental to natural light, Yan finds that greenhouse growers are more concerned with increasing light output per watt than with having full control of every color in the spectrum. Moreover, Yan notes that indoor farms are more concerned with the light spectrum than greenhouses since horticultural lighting is the sole light source.
You can find the RAYN Growing Systems team at Booth 01.764 at GreenTech Amsterdam, where they will be showcasing its Alina horticultural luminaires, RAYN Syrcadia software and new RAYN Vision System. The RAYN Vision System is being previewed at GreenTech and consists of a compact, self-contained camera with integral LEDs for creating multi-spectral image cubes. The accompanying analytics software can be configured by researchers to analyze the image cubes in whatever way they see fit, or researchers can use the image cubes with their own analytics systems. RAYN’s team will be available to discuss advanced lighting systems. If you miss RAYN Growing Systems in Amsterdam, you can also find them at Cultivate in July.
For more information:
Yan Ren-Butcher, Horticultural Lighting Consulting Specialist 
Rayn Growing Systems
3031 Pleasant View Middleton, WI,
53562 USA
www.rayngrowingsystems.com