FlowerNose's Electric Fruit Auto Grow Journal 2017

[FlowerNose]

@NezFleur

He's here, everybody. Mr FlowerNose will henceforth be NezFleur (French for FlowerNose. So fancy).

Love you, Nez!
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[FlowerNose]

Day 52
It's been a long day away from the house. If we hadn't had to run errands, Nez would have been rebuilding the lights for better coverage. It might have to wait for tomorrow.

But in other news, she's starting to mature! Here are some of her higher up leaves. The texture is visibly changing and I can start to see young trichome stalks coming up.

It's a jungle for sure and I'm starting to get worried she'll grow past the lights before she's done. I've been pinching her stems a bit. I haven't been bending them, but I'm breaking up some of the stem structure hoping to make her redirect her energy to minor repairs instead of height. I don't know if that will work.
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[Pennywise]

Keep us posted on trying to limit her heigth with crushing the stems.

 

[Jurf]

Very interesting. Seems like it was always coming to this point. Such a beast of a plant was surely going to cause a ruckus within such confines. Im sure you'll tame her though! I have every bit of faith in the ingenuity of the FlowerNose House!

 

[FlowerNose]

Nez worked on the next generation of Fruity's light last night and this morning.
Progress pic

Same wattage, but 8 (diodes?) instead of 3. Much better coverage.

Nez has been reading on grow lights and color spectrums and is working on the theory that light in the blue spectrum discourages stretching. We're giving it a go with 2 blue LEDs, 2 white, and 4 red.

Here's a pic off Fruity's prettiest parts.

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[FlowerNose]

Break time. Everything's coming out for the new setup to go in.

 

[FlowerNose]

Teaser for the upcoming post about all this awesome stuff.

 

[Pennywise]

We have lights!

 

[FlowerNose]

We have lights!

Indeed! It's a magical unicorn forest now instead of an eerie alien forest.

Don't mind me. I'm pretty high.

 

[FlowerNose]

Magical electric fruit.

She's so happy and bright.

A lot happened today and I'm still organizing photos to tell you all about it. It's probably going to take a couple posts to get it all out.
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[FlowerNose]

@NezFleur needs to come over here and tell you about these lights. Direct all technical questions to him.

They're so kick ass.

Up top, we've got wires, fans, and tubes.

Soon each cab will be an independently monitored micro climate geared to producing the best plant possible. Then we get to play with nutes and light configurations and training methods...

We just discussed today how this was such a fun project it counts as any vacation we might have planned. Mitigates the expense we've put into it. .
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[BrokenBranch]

Those lights are mad.. What's the heat output on that? Never seen a set up like that before. Subbed.

 

[Jurf]

Light looks excellent. I literally wanna know how to build one of these! Wanna know the cost and i want a goddamn tutorial! Take my money

 

[FlowerNose]

@NezFleur, come here. @Jurf wants a word with you.

 

[NezFleur]

Hi! We had three main goals for our lights and a few features crept in as well. Our main concern was price. We sourced most of our stuff off eBay from China. Our second goal was for control. The drivers I am designing will allow me to control the power levels from other devices (pic, plc, simple resistive circuit, etc). The third goal was to limit the heat into the cabinet. Using water cooling we can remove the heat instead of dissipating into the air.

The LEDs were the cheapest I could find, 10 for $25. Plan is to significantly under run them to limit heat. The heat sinks are 40x200mm off eBay at around $10 each. The water pump was around $3. The radiator and reservoir were $30 each. Heat past was $1/30g. The temporary drivers are 2x 50w @ $5 each and 1x 100w @ $10 each. 3x 120mm fans @ $3 each. And several hose clamps.

Think that covers everything for hardware. I did test ahs request replacements for the LEDs with issues which I'll post on in a thread for the lights, at some point. But it was all plug and play less some heat shrink to size barbs.

 

[Pennywise]

Good to meet you Nez, cobs are the way to go for sure. Under power them and drop them down low. .

 

[BulletTooth]

Thought I'd slide over and say A+ job. I'm subbed to see the beauty unfold namaste

 

[FlowerNose]

Thanks, BulletTooth! After seeing your garden, I'll take that as a huge compliment. Any advice appreciated.

 

[FlowerNose]

Day 50 something
Here's what happened yesterday. I defoliated. This is the before and after.

Not too shocking, right? She just looks healthier, imo. But then I look at the pile afterwards.

The stack in the bottom pic went in the fridge for eating.

So much space!

The evolution of Fruity's lights. Nez is so cool to have around. .

He got so much done this weekend despite an out-of-town trip to restock our bud jar. Look! We're finally Stealth!

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[FlowerNose]

. . . she's getting frosty. Just barely. This is so exciting!