gearthbeta
New Member
High all!
I'm pretty new on these forums and am currently working on my first grow and could use some input. I'm a geek at heart and am always looking for a way to add technology into the equation. Having some parts on-hand, I am beginning a bit of a journey/experiment to see how viable or realistic it is to go geek on my grow.
Thanks in advance all!
============================================
So my inner geek has kinda kicked in and I'm bringing part of my day job into into all of this for fun... I'm going to build a semi intelligent timer that will control lights and fans based not only on time but also on temperature and humidity. It's supposed to be a gloomy rainy weekend so I'm in hopes to have it at least mostly ready by Monday which is when my new (and proper) inline fan and dehumidifier arrive.
Through work I've been lucky enough to receive some free samples from vendors every now and again. When I get them I play with them and then determine if they are worth purchasing but after that the samples usually end up sitting in a box on my shelf. Today it occurred to me that a couple of them could be handy or fun, or both!
This is seriously an experiment and may never actually make it into my grow but... well ... yeah it'll still be a neat experiment!
The 2 items that I'll be using are:
Remote Monitoring System v1
and
Shuttle DS437
The RMS board has a decent amount of DC inputs to monitor voltages and has an ethernet jack to connect to a network but the real beauty for this experiment is that it has 3 independent relays that are capable of typical 110v household voltage (2x 5amp and 1x 10amp). Since I'm using a LED light that has a wall draw of 170W one of the 5 amp relays is more than sufficient (170w/110v=1.55 amps). There is a temperature sensor on it but no humidity sensor, I'm looking for one now that provides DC analog output and then it can be read by connecting it to one of the DC inputs.
The little Shuttle computer is running Ubuntu Server 14.04.3 with a simple LAMP server to read the inputs from the RMS board as well as to act as a webserver so that I can view things like the position of each relay (on/off), temperature and, when I find one, humidity.
I'm using php and perl to code the backend bits like relay control timers, action(s) based on temperature (turn booster fan on/off) and hopefully soon to toss humidity readings into it.
The dehumidifier that I ordered is based on peltier technology and has a humidistat also, the chip in it is DC voltage so, if I can't find a separate humidity sensor, I can always tie into the peltier power and be indicated of a more broad sense of the humidity and control fans based on if it's currently operating or not (turn on/off the booster fan to help expel humid air).
So far I have some test web pages and controls built that control and read the position of each relay and display their status as well as a crude relay on/off based on temperature. They're far from pretty but they work lol.
While typing up this post it dawned on me... wouldn't it be cool to have 2 humidity sensors and another temperature sensor (1 of each for inside the cabinet and one for each for outside the cabinet), that way I could graph and record them all and then maybe, in the future, start making something predictive.... hmm some food for thought but let's stick to the basics for now, I really need to get some grows out of the way before I could ever predict anything lol!
If anyone can provide any possible leads to a DC analog output humidity sensor, preferably sourced from Canada as that's where I'm from, I'd so very much appreciate it!
Anyhow, what do you guys think of this idea? Waste of time or does it sound like something fun regardless if it works out or not, like I do.
Thanks for checking this out!
I'm pretty new on these forums and am currently working on my first grow and could use some input. I'm a geek at heart and am always looking for a way to add technology into the equation. Having some parts on-hand, I am beginning a bit of a journey/experiment to see how viable or realistic it is to go geek on my grow.
Thanks in advance all!
============================================
So my inner geek has kinda kicked in and I'm bringing part of my day job into into all of this for fun... I'm going to build a semi intelligent timer that will control lights and fans based not only on time but also on temperature and humidity. It's supposed to be a gloomy rainy weekend so I'm in hopes to have it at least mostly ready by Monday which is when my new (and proper) inline fan and dehumidifier arrive.
Through work I've been lucky enough to receive some free samples from vendors every now and again. When I get them I play with them and then determine if they are worth purchasing but after that the samples usually end up sitting in a box on my shelf. Today it occurred to me that a couple of them could be handy or fun, or both!
This is seriously an experiment and may never actually make it into my grow but... well ... yeah it'll still be a neat experiment!
The 2 items that I'll be using are:
Remote Monitoring System v1
and
Shuttle DS437
The RMS board has a decent amount of DC inputs to monitor voltages and has an ethernet jack to connect to a network but the real beauty for this experiment is that it has 3 independent relays that are capable of typical 110v household voltage (2x 5amp and 1x 10amp). Since I'm using a LED light that has a wall draw of 170W one of the 5 amp relays is more than sufficient (170w/110v=1.55 amps). There is a temperature sensor on it but no humidity sensor, I'm looking for one now that provides DC analog output and then it can be read by connecting it to one of the DC inputs.
The little Shuttle computer is running Ubuntu Server 14.04.3 with a simple LAMP server to read the inputs from the RMS board as well as to act as a webserver so that I can view things like the position of each relay (on/off), temperature and, when I find one, humidity.
I'm using php and perl to code the backend bits like relay control timers, action(s) based on temperature (turn booster fan on/off) and hopefully soon to toss humidity readings into it.
The dehumidifier that I ordered is based on peltier technology and has a humidistat also, the chip in it is DC voltage so, if I can't find a separate humidity sensor, I can always tie into the peltier power and be indicated of a more broad sense of the humidity and control fans based on if it's currently operating or not (turn on/off the booster fan to help expel humid air).
So far I have some test web pages and controls built that control and read the position of each relay and display their status as well as a crude relay on/off based on temperature. They're far from pretty but they work lol.
While typing up this post it dawned on me... wouldn't it be cool to have 2 humidity sensors and another temperature sensor (1 of each for inside the cabinet and one for each for outside the cabinet), that way I could graph and record them all and then maybe, in the future, start making something predictive.... hmm some food for thought but let's stick to the basics for now, I really need to get some grows out of the way before I could ever predict anything lol!
If anyone can provide any possible leads to a DC analog output humidity sensor, preferably sourced from Canada as that's where I'm from, I'd so very much appreciate it!
Anyhow, what do you guys think of this idea? Waste of time or does it sound like something fun regardless if it works out or not, like I do.
Thanks for checking this out!