Are Commercial Growers Using Computer Technology in Their Grow Ops?

[Hackerman]

If I was to pay you do you think you could set something like this up to monitor and control PH

Well, I don't know about money but if you live in California..... I'm going to need a place to stay soon. LMAO j/k

I am going to add pH monitoring eventually but I don't have any real time way to develop it since I'm not hydro.

Are you hydro? What would work for your setup? A probe that sits in the tank 24/7? Do you monitor for more than pH? Don't hydro people monitor something with ppm of something? LOL Technical questions. LMAO

I'll eventually get to it but there are all kinds of problems to resolve before something like this is suitable for real use. I am having all kinds of errors in my setup. Common stuff but you need to code for it or the app locks up. e.g. I use an LDR for the light sensor. Well, as it turns out, in TOTAL darkness the capacitor in the circuit takes more than the micro second it takes in anything other than TOTAL darkness. Our grow rooms are so dark that the cap takes 3 or 3 minutes to exhaust. During that time the app runs in a loop and the processor gets REAL REAL hot. LOL Oops

Stuff like that..... and boundary checking, all have to be written into the code before it can come out of the 'hobby' classification. I'll eventually get there... well, maybe. LOL

Meanwhile, Check out some of the Vernier and other brands of wireless pH sensors. Under a hundred bux buys a 'hobby' quality sensor and the apps are a free download. Here's one that looks nice and is pretty affordable.... https://www.vernier.com/products/sensors/ph-sensors/gw-ph/

Here's the user's manual for it. Check it out and see if it will do what you want.

https://www.vernier.com/files/manuals/gw-ph.pdf

If anyone wants to do this at a 'hobby' level, I'll be happy to post some tutorials on how to get it up and running. However, keep in mind, this kind of thing is for fun, mostly. There will be problems every day (pretty much) that need to be addressed. The stuff you can buy online today is so affordable. And, it's pretty well tested (usually) LOL.

 

[Hackerman]

Both the application and the plants are coming along nicely. I can't wait to do an entire grow under time lapse.

Week 7 on the 2 Kush in the back (Barney's Farm Critical Kush and World of Seeds Landrace Afghan Kush), Week 6 on the 2 Hazeman strains (Triple XXX and Grape Stomper) on the left and the Cinderella 99 on the right. This was a fun experiment (5 different strains in large pots) but I don't think I'm going to get the 20 to 22 ounces of yield that I usually get with 16 #3 nursery pots that I usually use. The next grow is 3 of each of these 5 strains in #3 pots.

The application is coming along. I just got my Arduino Uno yesterday so I have been playing with that. The addition of analog inputs to the setup allows for much more versatile expansion, opening up the opportunity for analog sensors. So, it looks like each setup will be a Raspberry Pi with at least 1 Arduino attached.

The Arduino is another development board but this one uses the Atmel ATMega for it's main processor.

Pretty neat stuff. Been a lot of fun but this stuff eats up hours like a cop eats donuts. I ran 15 hours straight on it the other day and it felt like I was working on it for 20 minutes.

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[Hackerman]

Well, I have been spending a little more time on the interface, lately. I still need to qualify the sensor data and place some error checking in the routines but I jumped off that and started putting together the portal. This is all a matter of opinion so lease feel free to voice yours, regarding placement. Ease of viewability. Additional features, etc.

Hal mentioned that he would like to keep an eye on all the grow rooms/areas. For that end, I used the top 'navigation' area for a couple quick view items.

On the top left is the plant moisture graph. It's a bar graph that shows the moisture level of up to about 20 plants. It will monitor an indefinite number of plants but the space I allocated for the chart is only suitable for about 20 plants. I usually grow 16 plants in my flower room so, I'll set it up for 16. Right now it's just showing one sensor so there's only one bar. LOL Later, it will have 16 bars, each labeled, 'plant 1', 'plant 2' and so on. Each bar will be the moisture content of that plant.

Next is a simple update button that updates all the information in the charts and on the gauges.

Next are the 3 rooms I have. Veg, Flower and 'test'. The little picture is a streaming shot of the room so you can see all three at a glance. If you click on the picture, it takes you to another page just like this one only it has all the charts and gauges for that particular room. So, the 'navigation' pane allows you to see all the rooms at a glance and to jump to any room to see the details of that room.

Below all that are the charts that track the history of each object. I am going to modify the charts to have a drop down menu to select the time frame you want to view on that particular chart at any particulate time. So, if you want to see how the LUX has been the last hour, you can do that and see very minor changes. Or, you can select one day, week, month(s) or check the LUX degradation over the entire year.

Like I said, I am open to how it looks, and feels. Well, I guess you can't feel it but if anyone wants to do this, I can probably walk you though it. You'll have to be a computer person and some knowledge of Linux would be nice since the RPi runs on Linux.

I need some pretty background to accent the page (too bad I don't have a picture of Rosie ) Maybe some links to other objects. I do have 3 IP cameras in addition to the Pi cameras so I could put links to those, I guess.

What else is it that we would love to do without having to go there? I covered the temp, humidity, CO2, light, visual..... I could do sound but I don't think we really need that, do we? I suppose we could pipe music into the rooms to sooth the plants. LOL Or listen...... to see if they really do talk to each other when we're not around. LOL

Well, like I said, any input is good input.

Thanks

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[Hackerman]

Hey gang. I have an option in my light measurement sensor to show the light in 3 ways..

1. Infrared = x lux
2. Visible Light = x lux
or
3. Full Spectrum (IR + Visible) = x lux

Do we need to consider the separation? Are we concerned only with the visible spectrum or do the plants respond to the IR as well? And, if so, would it need to be broken out?

Anyone ever make any considerations regarding IR light?

Thanks

 

[Hackerman]

Just a little update. The interface is coming along. I have replaced all the original sensors with a slightly better quality for more accuracy.

I added barometric pressure (not sure why LOL). I love the separation of blue and red light. It was really obvious when I went from my desk with windows and desk lamps to the grow room. It was mostly red in the real world. In the grow room (T5's), the IR all but disappeared compared to the remaining spectrum.

The CO2 sensors have been constant problems. There's very limited code on them and the math to convert the voltage reading to CO2 content is nothing to guess at. It's got to be right on.

I added the soil moisture monitors, although, I'm not sure I like where they are. I am only testing 4 soil sensors right now but 8 would be real easy and 16 would be a small upgrade.

It's nice having actual LUX sensors instead of an LDR. I have compared these to a number of sources and the seem very very accurate. As with the temp and humidity sensors.

I cut the remote windows down to 2. One for the flowering room and one for the veg room. I figure, that's what most people have. And, if you have 20 vegs rooms and 20 flowering rooms, again, a small upgrade.

The cam takes a crumby picture. It's permanently set for infinity so anything closer than about 5 feet is half blurry. The zoom is pretty cool, albeit, blurry.

I'll post a couple screen shots. The first is the whole run. It scales very nicely to mobile platform (which is, I assume it's most practical use).

My flower room is a little full right now but you can see the pic and then, the zoom to one of the plants.

Once I get the CO2 sensors working and clean up the code a little, I'll be ready for a beta release.

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[St_Nick]

Cool stuff. I can see how CO2 could be a problem trying to regulate and monitor.