Round 3 - Capn Style - Automated

Skybound

Well-Known Member
Hello 420, it's been a while since I had a journal as it's been a while since I had a grow. That said, I found me a new spot to give it my best, and my best is what it's gonna get! The link in my signature goes to a blog entry I began here on 420 nearly 2 years ago and it outlines the beginnings of my quest to COMPLETELY AUTOMATE my grow. What this entails is to electronically manage every electric aspect of a typical indoor hydroponics grow with the use of a very popular microcontroller, The Arduino. This thing is all over YouTube and the greater web so a simple web search of the term will return tens of thousands of hits.

Essentially, all of my plumbing has been tied into the buildings inlet and drainage, and all of my reservoirs will tie into it all, so from the time my system draws water from the RO reservoir, fills each site, adds in nutes, mixes the nutes, checks PPM and PH multiple times every day, pumps to plants to feed them, then pump it all into the drainage once every 7-10 days, and repeat, all will be controlled by the Arduino. Not to mention, so too will the HID lighting, fans, dehumidifiers, (heater if needed), air temp and RH will be measured and High/Low points can be programmed to manage any other device, but generally speaking, it can all be controlled by one thing, and this one thing can be programmed and/or connected to a free app for Android and IOS to also manage everything remotely.

I know it's a lot to comprehend, and believe me I have been beating my head against a wall for 2 years trying to build this thing, teach myself how to write the needed code, learn how to build small circuits and all else that is entailed, but thankfully I am so very near completion of this project that I believe it will be complete on or shortly after my first (of hopefully many) harvest(s). My new spot affords me a closet for veg, and two 3'6" x 3'6" flowering rooms that I aim to have offsetting harvests month to month, and I hope to pull a pound from every harvest. I have 5 seedlings now that have sprouted from the rockwool cubes 4 days ago. Their first true leaves just opened and things will be underway shortly.

I am still in the construction of everything and will likely take me a few weeks before the flower rooms are built and everything set up. I have my veg devices connected with cheap timers till I can find the time to augment my code to run veg only. As this grow develops, I will stop posting updates and just shoot video so I can explain things out a little more.

My growing style is top feed over rock wool. My nutrients are General Hydroponics, and all supplements are also from GH. I use beneficial bacteria weekly, or when root concerns warrant additional use. I have a 4' 4 bulb T5 in veg, and I will be using 600 watt HID/HPS for bloom. I top often to build out the canopy, and ideally I veg for 10 or so weeks, though with the limited bloom space, I may change that slightly to better suit my goals. This will be my 3rd run with this method and it taught to me by The Capn who is no longer a 420 member. After harvest, I also wash my buds according to Doc Bud's wash recipe.

That's about it for now. I likely forgot to mention a lot, but that's the downside of reinventing the wheel while stoned, too many fleeting thoughts, not enough order. I'll add more as I remember.

And lastly, welcome to my 3rd journal, I hope many subscribe! Peace!

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Duhhh,

The 3 on the left are Nirvana - Bubblelicious from Herbies. Well all 3 germinated, but only 2 stood up. I think the 3rd lassie don't wanna get out of bed.

The others were gifted to me roughly 3 years ago from another grower. I never thought they would germinate, but these are the ones that did. The lone seedling is a Bubblegum and the other 2 are also Bubblelicious which gives me 4 Bubbs and 1 Gum. The old bubbs and the gum will go to bloom asap to buy me time to veg the Bubbs I order from Herbies. Of course I will be monitoring phenotypes along the way and if I find better performance from the old Bubbs than I do in the new Bubbs, I will keep the old ones alive through cloning.
 
:high-five: yes! You built the thing! (Almost) Reps for that right off the start.
Nice to see you back and happy to be on page one of this journal.
Are you going to be making this a video journal like last time- or a 'normal' journal?
I have to say- my internet here doesn't really let me watch videos- so I guess you know what I'm hoping....
 
For you Weasel my (man?), I'll post too when I shoot video. It's just that sometimes it's a hassle to type everything in detail and try to explain with pictures, but I will find the time to hammer it all out on the keyboard. In the course of my project, I had everything all built and tested, but I neglected to test the circuitry under the intended amount of watts (current), and just before I started the journal, someone on the Arduino forum pointed out some flaws in my design, so now I had to open up the project box and am in the process of updating the circuits. I can't help but notice how much I've already learned trying to create what I want. I never in a million years thought I'd need to learn to write code, but I did. Also soldering different components together is also being learned, but I am very close to having a complete dosing system from it all. But the closer I get to my end goal, the less amount of personal involvement will be required of me and I will be able to continue living my life while gaining control of nearly every known variable.

Just think, we use all these different devices that we plug mostly into independent timers. These timers are in no way precise, plus not being synchronized to one another equates to our best effort translating into a "fluctuating" schedule to our ladies. Just my ability to program everything in accordance to just one highly accurate clock alone puts me ahead of most other growers ability to get everything in sync, but, but, but wait it gets worse! (Onyx reference) I also have a simple and cheap temperature/humidity sensor that accurately scans the air conditions roughly once every 5 seconds, and if anything gets above or below some preset values, I can send 120 volts to a set of outlets that will activate a fan, AC unit or a heater, or whatever else I have connected, like a dehumidifier. Water pumps are set to go off when programmed to, and for the programmed duration. This way my late veg plants can get three drenches daily while freshly rooted cuts can get a coco style (30% runoff) watering. Little things like this I feel will add up to increase plant growth performance and will at the same time ease lingering concerns that I know every single indoor grower on earth entertains multiple times per every single day while frequently ponder if "our best effort" was good enough? Did I forget to turn the timer back on? Am I gonna get home from a short road trip to find half my grow on the brink of death while the remainder is already withered? I grew very tired of that stress and aim to completely overcome it, and any measure of success I will share to everyone for free so nobody else has to endure the pains of learning new things for need.

But why stop there? I have quickly found a few weeks into bloom of my last grow that carrying 10 gallons up and down stairs was going to cause an injury, so I found a way to snake 1/4" tubing from my RO unit, through the walls, up to my grow in the attic to my RO storage in the grow area. Carrying water from there into the next room was also a pain in the rocks, so I tied the plumbing together between the RO and the 3 bloom sites I had in the next room, and controlled everything with cheap ball valves I picked up from the hydro store nearby. Well when I need to change the res every week, getting rid of the spent nutes was a hassle, so I ran a waste line made of 1/2" poly tubes we use down through the other wall and tied it into the building's drainage system. At my new location, I didn't hesitate to apply those lessons prior to starting and I now have a complete plumbing circuit into and out the grow area and will begin building the bloom rooms later today. I am also still trying to design a motorized valve that will work with our small water pumps as they don't generate a lot of pressure and most valves on the market require more. PPM and PH measuring is simply a matter of cost. Atlas Scientific has a long line of circuits and metering probes that work well with Arduino, but once I can afford that, I hope to have my motorized valves designed and built so I can control all devices and liquid movements precisely.

Aside from all that can be programmed, also having the ability to monitor and override the program of whatever devices I want to extend that privilege translates into my not needing to be physically present to perform tasks in my grow. All I need is internet connection at the grow site and on the smartphone or tablet. This means (once everything is complete) I can get a PPM or PH reading from any specific tank, and if I find something I don't like, and can add in a nutrient(s) or plain RO water and give the roots a quick flush, or send it straight into the tank, from pretty much anywhere in the world.

As far as I can tell, no other grower has developed such control over his/her indoor hydroponic grow. Sharing it for free gives me a lot of internal joy. I doubt many will be willing to take the plunge as everything is not cheap, but if anyone does decide to build such a "thing", I will share my code, and circuit diagrams, and assist in modifying it to fit other needs. I can save other a but ton of cash that I had wasted along the way buying incorrect electronics and other supplies. You would need to learn to at least understand the code, but a few short tutorials on YouTube will get ya up to speed. Other than that, things are slowly progressing.

I transplanted the 5 in cubes yesterday into crouton filled solo cups after a feed of 150 ppm veg mix. The cotyledons are slowly withering and second set of true leaves are emerging. One of the old Bubbleliscious plants began to wither a few days back and her stalk has thinned out and her top fell over. I supported her with a toothpick, and the past few days she is showing improvement as her leaves continue to grow, though she still may fail at any time. I think if she can survive until I introduce silica next week, she'll bounce back with that. I will take some photos later when I building and share them tonight or tomorrow.

Peace all!
 
Real quick, here's the overall project box, with the location of the various sensors and relay control. The second box with the green dots is the dosing pumps and I am almost finished building that. It will draw from 1 gallon GH nutrient and supplement bottles. I will use the silica to replace the PH UP, but will still use PH DOWN. Perhaps another 8 may be needed in the future because 8 enough? The PH and PPM stuff is still on the wish list, but it's already complete and others already use them in their fish tanks.

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This one is how my bloom rooms will be. each will be about 3'6" squared, and the middle space will be for the mast RO res and the nutrients and electronics. I already built the PVC rails and I have most all other plumbing fittings and hoses. I just need to finish those valves. Though the bloom rooms and veg are on opposing sides of the room (veg is in the closet), all the plumbing is tied together. This way I can pump something from veg back to bloom to wash over the testing rail and either have the option of wasting it into the drainage, or return it to the site that it came from. The electronics will be connected through 50' of ethernet cable and the Arduino's 9 volt power will also go through the ethernet.

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Sorry AngryBird, didn't even notice your post till after I sent the other two. Welcome! Feel free to share whatever you want! I've never been an "on topic" guy, especially when nothing can be learned if it is not first expressed, and I LOVE TO LEARN! I hope I never stop learning all things.
 
Sorry AngryBird, didn't even notice your post till after I sent the other two. Welcome! Feel free to share whatever you want! I've never been an "on topic" guy, especially when nothing can be learned if it is not first expressed, and I LOVE TO LEARN! I hope I never stop learning all things.

That is the spirit!! Also, don't be afraid to think "outside the box". Some good things might pop up :) I use old socks instead of solo cups..works super :)
 
You use old socks as starting pots? Does that make potting up difficult if roots grow vigorously?
 
Update;

The girls are in their 3rd week of life and seem to be truckin along nicely. I have them on a scheduled feeding now and slapped together a quick feed system until I can arrange the closet around better and build something a little more intentional. The lights are 18/6, and I feed three times during the 18, each for a duration of 2 minutes. A little excessive for their young age? Maybe, but I'm not worried as the drippers don't squirt anywhere near the stem, so the roots will have to stretch a bit to really get wet. PH has climbed over the past 3 days to 6.6, so I added a mild dose of PH Down and my last measurement was 6.3 and falling. Because I only have under 2 gallons of water in that res, I have to be really careful adjusting PH. I have PPM @ 250 (.5 conv), and I was heavy on the N, introduced silica and Flora Blend. I won't give numbers at this time because I honestly don't know how much water is in the res. I am also eagerly awaiting an 8oz. tub of RealGrowers Recharge. Someone gifted me a tub in the past and I had expected results from it, plus I am an avid user of beneficial bacteria in my grows, and previously, I used to brew a weekly "version" of Heisenberg Tea, but Recharge is much simpler, just mix a 1/2 TSP to a gallon of water, shake, and inoculate. If you don't already use beneficial bacteria, please immediately adopt the practice. If you grow in a sterile environment, I suggest switch to using bennies. Root growth performance in a live environment is simply better. You can still contract pythium in sterile, plus using bennies, not only cleans your roots with every use, but the bennies also further breaks down nutrients in the grow media, making for a cleaner environment.

Anyways, the automation project is coming along while in the same breath proving to be a major pain! I have little doubt my bloom rooms will begin under an automated schedule, while sharing all sensor readings to my phone every couple of seconds. I hope to start bloom in roughly 2 weeks. Those rooms are nearly complete, but because of circumstances, I am only able to construct for brief times each day, but I expect to have them ready in 2 weeks, then it's game on! Still so much to do! Wish me luck gang.

Peace!

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Almost forgot;
1)Bubblelicious 1 (recently purchased from Herbies)
2)Bubblelicious 1 (3 year old seeds gifted to me)
3)Bubblegum (3 year old seeds gifted to me)
4)Bubblelicious 2 (recently purchased from Herbies)
5)Bubblelicious 2 (3 year old seeds gifted to me)
 
You use old socks as starting pots? Does that make potting up difficult if roots grow vigorously?

To me it is easier to water them and when you re-plant them, just "unfold" when wet and all is there.
 
Recharge is definitely convenient, but if it were not available to me, I would pursue a recipe of ingredients that I can locate. Are you able to get any mycos? I remember GreenthumbJ had fantastic results from GH Sub Culture. Perhaps in the future, I will switch out the RC for a run with Sub Culture.
 
@Weaselcracker, do you use any other similar products with beneficial bacteria? I just transplanted yesterday, and just one use of Recharge has helped to produce fantastic root growth, but I've had just as great results from "Heisenberg Tea" which is nothing more than a concoction of widely accessible ingredients that produce a beneficial environment for the bacteria to colonize. If you Google Heisenberg Tea, you can find an archived post on another forum, and that post expands the list of what is good to find in other (non-US) countries. A grower can not go wrong using beneficial bacteria!

Update;

All 5 plants are about 3.5 weeks old and I am nearing the completion of my build of the bloom rooms which is good because I need to clear at least 1 plant from the top of the tote. The transplant went well, but I potted up to a larger size than I wanted to use. I didn't have enough 1 gallon pots on hand, so I just used what I had. The root balls are way better populated than I anticipated, and only 1 use of Recharge so far. I will RC tonight to help the roots explore all the new real estate. I also clearly need to get better acquainted with the camera on this phone. I will try to shoot better pics in the future. The plants are looking very well! The increased nitrogen regimen seems to be working well. I am working off memory of feed schedules I used in the past and the early veg recipe was;

Flora Gro - 3
FLora Micro - 2
Flora Bloom - 1,

I augmented that to be 3-3-1 as Flora Micro is high in N. I also have been gradually ramping up the supplements and additives respectively. The res I built last night has roughly 10 gallons of RO, and I got the PPM to 340 and pH is sitting dead on 5.6, but I know that will increase as the days pass, plus I can also add small doses of silica to bump the ppm and pH if needed. The closer I get to finishing the build, the more time I'll have for taking notes and getting my numbers more exact on things which makes for a better journal. Once I work in the automation, growing will actually be fun again and I can focus more thought into the actual plants instead of everything else.

I don't expect anyone to have the excitement that I do from the progress I am making in the electronics stuff, but it is all starting to come together now at an increased rate and I think I am just days away from deploying it into the grow which will make my life A LOT EASIER. I don't know if other hydro growers feel the constant concern the way I do, but I've experienced a few mishaps in my previous grows that simply would not have happened if I would have had better control. It's a nightmare trying to sync all these different mechanical timers to a schedule, and in most cases, time isn't the best mechanism to test to gain optimum control. Like during lights out in an otherwise cooler area, which nights are gonna be the nights that I need a heat source during the dark periods? Time can't answer that question, but a temp sensor can. What if neither time nor temp will suffice, like in how long a pump needs to have power to produce 10 gallons of water, or 113ml of a specific nutrient? I can be a sensor connected to my grow via the internet and my smartphone. I guess you can say that I am building my own version of a growbot. All of my findings I will share here for free in case anyone else wants to gain total control.

Enough tech stuff, some pics of the progress!

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Edit - I also need to make larger drip rings for each plant to get a better drench during each feeding. One of the better qualities of rock wool is that it is near impossible to over water, so when only watering briefly throughout the day, it's best to thoroughly drench when feeding.
 
Good news- I talked to the Recharge guys and after a little digging it turns out it does ship to Canada from the Amaz--.com site. :thumb: For some reason it wasn't showing on the .ca version and that's the one I usually stick with. The .com one is full of stuff that doesn't ship- or has mega shipping fees and possible border issues and charges.

Wow nice roots.

I joined 420 because I stumbled on to the Cap'ns posts and started dreaming about growing that way. I still haven't gotten on to growing Cap'n style yet but I did read through a lot of that stuff about teas and I used to make them once in awhile.
Now I'm away for work a lot and hardly ever at the grow long enough to even brew a tea most weeks. Plus - just being lazy and want to try something simple, good, and easy.
With the teas I always feel like I'm just mixing up a bunch of stuff and I have really no idea what I'm brewing. I know it's not exactly rocket science and hard to screw it up too much, but right now I feel like being lazy and using something proven.

I don't expect anyone to have the excitement that I do from the progress I am making in the electronics stuff...

This stuff gets me excited. With an little jealous twinge cause I know I'm never going to have time to do this sort of stuff in the foreseeable future, or even get to the point where I really grasp wtf you're actually doing, lol, cause I'm busy being a single-parent and whatnot- but man- I think it's really cool.
 
Congrats on your findings Weaselcracker! Your girls will definitely love you more now, and you'll see that in your transplants.

"Prestige World Wide (wide) Wide (wide). We do the science, so you don't have to" hehe Step Brothers reference.

Listen, when I get this thing up and running, I am going to share the schematics for free and make it as plug and play as I possibly can. I knew getting into it that I was gonna have to bite the bullet and learn a shit ton of coding and circuit building just to bring this idea into fruition. If I lived in a perfect world, someone would've already put all this stuff together and had code written, then I could've used all that time on a grow, and money wasted on new growing gear, but it is what it is. This idea started when I was working extremely long shifts at work while I had my first grow, and back then, was before Recharge so I had to brew every week. Growing under the traditional standard is just way too time consuming. Well it, doesn't have to be that way. We do have the technology now to overcome that, just gotta smash it all together. That said, the next man won't have to spend nearly as much as I did as I will write up a concise parts list, plus other options I know about, assembly instructions, pre-written code and I will help to modify it to fit your specific needs etc etc. Imagine taking your grow to work with you and doing a res change during a bathroom break, checking EC and PH, and adjust according to your schedule. The possibilities are just too endless to try and outline here.
 
Update & Pics

I worked a long week so progress made at the grow was minimal. I was able to spend a few hours today swapping out the res mix and adding a bit more to the bloom rooms. Because my grow is at a different location, I am only able to dedicate a few hours a week, but over time it will all add up. My hope is to get a single bloom room functional in a week, but with business increasing at work, money gained is equaling time lost and it hurts my heart to be falling way behind schedule. This is also why I very much desire full automation. I look forward to a time when I can still work my job while also monitoring the room stats and also have the ability to do something about it. Thankfully I was able to spend a good amount of time this past week updating my circuits and code. What I consider basic functionality is what I have already accomplished in building and programming and it is as follow;

time keeping
temp & humidity sensing
relays to control all on/off grow room devices
network through Blynk so I can check time, air stats and which relays are being used. My program is for bloom lights, but changing it to veg is just a minor adjustment in code.

This I think I can have in play in four days or so, just need the spare time. The final parts will arrive in the mail tomorrow and this stage of the project will be good. I also am finished building the 8 dosing head pump system for my nutrients. I just need a little time to experiment and figure out how to calibrate for future use. To my knowledge, it is just basic math and geometry mixed with some testing, and that will be ready to graft into the above mentioned stage of the project. After that I need to find/build valves to work with our low PSI water pumps, and finally buy the water monitoring devices and circuits. Oooo, I can't wait!

Sorry, my mind went off on a tangent, I'm baked. The grow is going well. The 2 Bubblelicious from the 3 year old seeds are doing the best. The new Bubbs are in second for height and the Bubblegum is in last. I still haven't taken any cuts, though I probably should have weeks ago. Oh well, I did want to cut a large chunk off each to begin topping out to fill 3.5 feet squared with colas while also giving me 2-3 cuts from each plant to begin rooting. The DIY flood table is working as great as it did in my previous grow. PPM is around 350 and pH was a bit low, but it will climb. They get their weekly Recharge inoculation and the roots are poking out of every hole in the pot, nice and white. I love the way beneficial bacteria makes root systems so vigorous!

Here's the pics;
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Here's the plumbing system. The Tote pictured is the veg mix tote. One valve opens the line to waste, the other up to the plants. When one is opened, the other is obviously closed. When its time to change the res, I close the feed valve and open the waste valve and the feed pump pumps out all but roughly 1/2 gallon (1-2 liters). As the weeks progress, I will get a smaller tote to replace that tote. My plan is to experiment and see if I can build a sub frame to the dimensions of a tote with a square 6" x 6" hole in a corner, than with a heat gun, heat up the plastic and hopefully it becomes pliable enough to push the center down and reform the tote to have a protrusion sticking out of a corner out the bottom of the tote. This I think will make a sump in the tote and the pump can sit down in it and pump out everything down to a few ounces. I would be very content to leave a few ounces of the previous weeks nutes in the tote after a res change. That wouldn't influence the next res mix at all. Also shown is the 1/4" feed line from the RO filter and the waste line going into the wall near the floor. These two lines are paired and run behind the baseboards of the room. Some drywall had to be removed to accommodate, but aside from the room being halved by new construction, you'd never guess there was plumbing in there.

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I like that idea of re-forming the res to make space for the pump. I'm using one of those wheely garbage cans and it has a recess in the bottom, or more accurately a raised section where the wheels are. So that works well enough, and I don't plan on running the res dry much, but it's always bugged me not having the option. I suppose I could fill the existing pump well with styrofoam (or something better than styro)
Very cool. Sounds like things are going well for you. The last journal had some stressful moments. :laughtwo:
 
It's gonna be a $10 gamble for sure. I mess things up ALL THE TIME with experimenting, and it does cost me a pretty penny to learn these lessons.

How much water is left behind when the pump reaches its limit of what it can pump? My only concern is the crud that gets left behind every time a site res is emptied. You have any ideas how I can clean that stuff out if I'm not physically there to clean it out? In the long run, I don't think res changes can be done autonomously with electronics for this reason, but if you have any idea how to accomplish this, I will definitely be the test dummy.:goof:
 
In that case wouldn't it make more sense to have a little extra basement room for the crud?

Crud is not something that bothers me because I'm only away weekdays and sometimes for a couple weeks on vacation. My main res setup is for the little DTW section of my grow where I run small one-off plants from seed. Just a way to use up freebies and bagseeds and have fun. And obviously I don't have anything fancy in the line- it just has a hose to a manifold that splits it into 1/4" lines. I drilled all the flow-rate valves out of the manifold because they were constantly screwing up. And left the 1/4 lines open ended. So there's really nothing to clog in my case. And I never run the res dry. I never even changed the res the last two times I did DTW runs, just topped it up. Maybe I won't get away with that forever.
I have another autowatering setup for my larger plants for vacations which I've only used once so far. Same deal though.

As for your gunk issue, what about a drain pump that isn't submerged- so you could have it external and access a drain at the extreme bottom of your res. And a separate pump for feeding with. Located higher up. I'm not sure that this would eliminate the gunk, but perhaps in combo with a sort of separation grate at the bottom for crud settling.

When you're talking about someone else's grow that you've only seen through a phone screen, you never quite know if you have a handle on what they're talking about. So I may just be talking shit. But here's a quote I got from a quick internet search where I found someone with a similar issue but trying to setup a automatic watering/cleanout system for their cat's watering bowl.


The displacement pump uses small chambers built into a rotating disk. When operating, the action creates suction on one side, often allowing several feet of water to be LIFTED and ejected. Displacement pumps such as the FloJet series do not need to be submerged and can be located some distance from the liquid.
 
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