Arduino Controlled Grow and PC Program - Work In Progress

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got2doodle

Member
Haven't had time to read the whole thread but...
Exciting to find someone else using an arduino in a grow room!

I'm currently building my room, I have a few arduinos and I been programming for years (php, perl, c++ basic) I plan on growing organic so mostly for me the arduino will maintain the environment.

I am going to have two 320w MH bulbs in a 4x4 room, I want to program the lights to share the load so for example maybe mid flowering bulb A burns for 4 hours Bulb A and B burn for 4 hours (massive light roughly around the maximum recommende) this should give some foliage penetration and then the last four hours is just Bulb B. The way I see it, plants don't like surprises so even switching from 18/6 to 12/12 could be a more gradual change. You could change the duration over a period of a week (or weeks) and the plants wouldn't be sitting there for a few days saying WTF just happened??

I haven't seen any other info regarding this approach and my gut just tells me that the plants would like it.

Anway, I'll be sub'ed and watching this closely.

Gotta go, stuff to do
doodle
 
Afistakis

Afistakis

Member
IMHO there can never be too much light. Only too hot and close to the tops of the plants hence my 3kw per 8 site strategy per 4x8 tent. I wish I had more power to give them and more space to simulate their natural environment! I follow and have learned tons from a guy doing 1kw per plant on 110" centers. 4 plants, 4kw. That seems to be more toward the recipe I want to cook. With decent ventilation and maybe a little climate control 1kw should be easy to manage in a 4x4. The foot candle foliage penetration is so much higher than lower wattage lighting. I can supply numbers but if you want to substantiate my incredible claims but I am Le tired and Le lazy atm.

On a side note, it is an interesting idea to cycle lights to move the origin and leave your cumulative output the same. I think it would be cheaper to just move the lights and have fans blow the plants around a little to enhance canopy penetration. There really isn't much room in a 4x4 to do much of anything though.

my 2c
 
A

AdvancedNewbie

Well-Known Member
Free day - going to work on this all today. I have my voltage regulators to run the mega / lcd screen at the same time now ( more power ). I still haven't found much information on what type of dimmer would work for an inline fan (chops the AC wave) or if you'd have to lower the voltage (using a Variac and lowers the amplitude of the AC wave). I'm thinking a variac would probably be the best so I don't 'turn on and off' the fan; maybe blow the capacitor in the inline fan powersupply? I have a good means of communication between the ardunio and raspberry pi now and can write a little script to output some graphs for a HTML webpage using the raspberry pi. I'm going to put everything in the relay box today and power it all using my new voltage regulator. woot
 
G

got2doodle

Member
Would PWM work to control the fan speed? Assuming a relay is controlling the fan, the fan only gets power for half the time? I'm no electronic whiz but why do you think this would blow the capacitor?
 
G

got2doodle

Member
Afistakis said:
IMHO there can never be too much light. Only too hot and close to the tops of the plants hence my 3kw per 8 site strategy per 4x8 tent. I wish I had more power to give them and more space to simulate their natural environment! I follow and have learned tons from a guy doing 1kw per plant on 110" centers. 4 plants, 4kw. That seems to be more toward the recipe I want to cook. With decent ventilation and maybe a little climate control 1kw should be easy to manage in a 4x4. The foot candle foliage penetration is so much higher than lower wattage lighting. I can supply numbers but if you want to substantiate my incredible claims but I am Le tired and Le lazy atm.

On a side note, it is an interesting idea to cycle lights to move the origin and leave your cumulative output the same. I think it would be cheaper to just move the lights and have fans blow the plants around a little to enhance canopy penetration. There really isn't much room in a 4x4 to do much of anything though.

my 2c
Click to expand...
No it's not much room, but I don't need much medicine just for myself. Many strains can produce 500gr/sq meter, if you know what you're doing (which I don't BTW). If I could get yields like that it would be way more than I need. I just thought the two lights would be a way to ramp up the intensity, my balast are not digital, but they were very cheap (like me). The arduino also has some eprom memory so that I could log the bulb usage and not lose that data with a power out by dividing the load between two bulbs, example each burns for eight with a four hour overlap I just have to store one number because it's the same for both bulbs.

But I'm a long way off from being there, I grew once about thirty years ago and I broke rule #1, the next thing I knew I had friends bringing friends over to see my plants!!
Duh!
Nobody knows this time!
 
A

AdvancedNewbie

Well-Known Member
got2doodle said:
Would PWM work to control the fan speed? Assuming a relay is controlling the fan, the fan only gets power for half the time? I'm no electronic whiz but why do you think this would blow the capacitor?
Click to expand...
Not too sure, this is what I've seen on different web pages, but others say it's okay. I don't think an inline fan is the same as a ceiling fan, either way I bought a cheap variable speed controller for an inline fan on ebay for $22. On a side note, I tried a lamp dimmer, and half or lower gave me some flicker but half way and up the fan was nice n' slow like I wanted, then all the way up was full speed. The dimmer I tried is an Incandescent (tungsten filament) dimmer Max: 300W .... I didn't want to run this method until I knew for sure this was okay. It does work by chopping the AC wave.
 
G

got2doodle

Member
I don't completely understand the inline adjective used in your post, but assuming you have a motor, and there is a power supply (the part that contains the capacitor) then a relay could potentially meter out the current after the power supply. Usually when a capacitor is significant it's used as a startup component, like using a capacitor to jump start a three phase motor. I think in general motors are pretty simple devices, there aren't too many ways to make magnets attract. Anyway, I have no 'medicine' right now, red wine only, so I seriously doubt that my comment will make any sense but WTF , I'm posting anyway. I plan to do some experiments on my own with motor control, but that aint gonna happen tonight!

Cheers,
doodle
 
A

AdvancedNewbie

Well-Known Member
It's just the fact that the capacitor has to load and unload fast to be able to smooth out the on/off switches of the dimmer, you're right though; usually with a capactior used to jump a motor into starting has to deal with there being no resitance at the start because there is no induction that has taken place yet. But that's an entirely different than smoothing out the chops in the wave. So the question is - is the powersupply (ie. capacitor) going to be able to deal with the chops? When I say inline, it's just like a regular 6inch 400cfm fan that goes 'inline' with the ducting (ducting attached to each side of the fan). My fan is in the attic, so testing this isn't really a great option for me; just in case something were to happen.

Option 2: Lower the voltage to the fan
 
A

AdvancedNewbie

Well-Known Member
Some people have been asking about the wiring for the relays and the outlets. Here's a quick photo I edited:

Wiring Up Relays.jpg Note: "N/O" is "Normally Open" and "N/C" is "Normally Closed"

!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!EDIT: Also, I have mine setup on the Normally Open side (opposite to what it shows on the picture) so when the lights go off I can take my system down to work on it or do a firmware upgrade, etc, without the lights and fans and pumps all turning on. This is much better!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
 
A

AdvancedNewbie

Well-Known Member
I have updated the code for the Arduino standalone sketch and have included a Python script and a PHP webpage for controlling the Arduino remotely. This is now available at: https://sourceforge.net/projects/envirocontrol/

Note: I am using a Raspberry Pi as a web server for the Python script and the PHP webpage. The Raspberry Pi costs about $35 and is basically a credit-card-sized small computer capable of running linux. This computer fits in my relay box along with my Arduino and Touchscreen interface.

Arduino PHP Control.jpg
 
A

AdvancedNewbie

Well-Known Member
I finally got my speed controller - so I'll wire it up this weekend :) Then I can start writing the PID loop for the Fan Speed based on the temperature. (Just going to keep switching between the circuit with the speed controller (adjustable) and full 120V)
 
A

AdvancedNewbie

Well-Known Member
After many hours of research, I will most likely be getting this: http://webpages.charter.net/tdsmeter/products.html The submersible probe = $27 and the transmitter (just takes the input from the probe and outputs a range of 0 - 5V) for another $27... or an inline for $45... I will need two for each reservoir. I'm still waiting on my network cable to show up (bought a big spindle with a crimper tool off eBay pretty cheap - going to use this for my sensor cables.)
 
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