7 ms·

I built myself an automated hydroponic grow tent. It measures and corrects pH, electrical conductivity, oxidation reduction potential, temperature of the air a

I built myself an automated hydroponic grow tent. It measures and corrects pH, electrical conductivity, oxidation reduction potential, temperature of the air and water, water level, and humidity. It also automates pumps, lights, and fans (I know people normally advise against this). None of it is particularly sophisticated, but I’m really proud of it. I initially used a deep water culture and later moved on to the nutrient film technique. It produces a lot of greens and herbs — way more than I ever expected — and it’s remarkably hands off. I recently left it to do its thing for almost 3 months before I had to intervene, and the problem wasn’t the water, nutrients, or the system failing explicitly. The plants just got too big for their channels and as they became stressed, they developed some pest issues. It was such a cool and empowering experience to see real world automation Just Work. The whole thing is powered by an Arduino Nano RP2040 Connect. It’s a great little controller. I’m currently designing my first PCB to consolidate the system onto a single board so my friends can easily build their own. It’s not extremely cheap, but it’s not too expensive either and you get a tremendous amount of food from it. It’s such a fun hobby.

jacquesm 4y ago
> It produces a lot of greens and herbs If that were NL at this point your whole audience would be on the floor laughing. 'Suuuure...'. What some people won't do to get decent tomatoes.
- TeMPOraL 4y ago
  Not from NL, but already started smiling at "hydroponic" :).
- sirsinsalot 4y ago
  Hey don't judge my pursuit of dank tomatoes
  - HeyLaughingBoy 4y ago
    Fingers crossed for full legalization in Minnesota today. Including grow your own!
    - sirsinsalot 4y ago
      Tomatoes are already legal i've no idea what you're talking about.
  - RankingMember 4y ago
    Tomacco!
- nemonemo 4y ago
  Sorry for my ignorance, but is NL Netherlands? Also, could you give me some more context on why the people would be laughing?
  - madmads 4y ago
    NL is meant as Netherlands here and the context is that since you can't talk about growing cannabis in the open, people talk about their "vegetable" gardens or "herbs" instead. The comment you're responding to is implying that the grow tent is used to grow cannabis but he's covering it up by saying it's a vegetable garden.
    - jacquesm 4y ago
      Almost: if it were NL I would imply that it is to grow cannabis but since the OP is obviously 100% sincere I don't doubt they're doing the legit thing.
- RajT88 4y ago
  You joke, but I have heard radio ads for hydroponic supplies in Canada, which very much had the tone of "wink, wink y'know for your veggie garden". There was even a chuckling group of people in the background when they mentioned "veggies". This was in Toronto around 2011.
- steve_adams_86 4y ago
  Haha, I forget sometimes that I’ve totally normalized growing greens and other people associate it with cannabis. I’ve had a couple people come into my workshop and end up looking suspiciously at the grow tent humming along on the corner. When they see that it’s actually just lettuce I think they’re kind of surprised.
  - jacquesm 4y ago
    Np, I just thought it was very funny. I've had a similar thing here where I ordered 500 ziplock backs and the guy on the other side goes '5 gram or 25 gram'? So I asked why the bags are so heavy and hilarity ensued. I needed them as parts bags for Lego... but it turns out they almost exclusively sell to gardeners.
  - akiselev 4y ago
    Likewise! You should have seen the look on the landlord's face before I opened it up to show them the mess of cucumber plants in space buckets (sidenote: do not grow vining plants in a grow tent!)
itsmeste 4y ago
Do you know of a good source of information on how to recognize any plant's nutrient deficiencies accurately?
- steve_adams_86 4y ago
  Unfortunately no, there’s a lot of misinformation everywhere I look. I try to record my own experiences and stay on top of tracking results so I can know what helps under which conditions. Hydro seems to have mostly eliminated those concerns for me, though my outside garden still runs into all kinds of problems that are tricky to diagnose.
- akeck 4y ago
  Check out Bunnie Huang's post from Covid lockdown: https://www.bunniestudios.com/blog/?p=6481 https://www.bunniestudios.com/blog/?p=6481
  - steve_adams_86 4y ago
    This is awesome, thank you!
thendrill 4y ago
Can you please share a list of the sensors you use? I am very interested in this.
- steve_adams_86 4y ago
  I’ve been collecting them over time so I don’t have everything handy, but here are some: pH: https://www.dfrobot.com/product-2069.html https://www.dfrobot.com/product-2069.html EC: https://www.dfrobot.com/product-2565.html https://www.dfrobot.com/product-2565.html Water temperature: https://www.adafruit.com/product/381 https://www.adafruit.com/product/381 CO2: https://www.adafruit.com/product/5190 https://www.adafruit.com/product/5190 Air temp and humidity: https://www.adafruit.com/product/3251 https://www.adafruit.com/product/3251 There are others but I’ll have to dig into it! I think you could spend less on alternatives, too.
  - Kapura 4y ago
    thank you! i am also super interested in something like this
    - steve_adams_86 4y ago
      You should absolutely go for it. Start even simpler and with lower investment if you want, too. These systems are easy to get running and you can gradually add sensors and automation as you go. I wish I started a lot earlier, but I was constantly trying to have the right stuff, or enough stuff to get started with the perfect setup. It turns out that makes no sense. You’re going to make mistakes, learn stuff, figure out what you like and don’t like, etc. Starting with a bare bones setup using NFT, not even in a grow tent necessarily, you’ll figure out really quickly what you want to do with it and how to move forward. Something I also didn’t really understand or consider is how easy it is to add sensors or update firmware gradually. Each of the sensors I use is useful independently or together; it’s totally fine to start with just one. Though most important is arguably water and air temperature; you’ll use those to accurately adjust other sensor readings, and in the short term, they’re immediately critical to plant health. I’ve got a small system running on my old deep water culture equipment in my outdoor greenhouse, and I actually check its pH with plain old pH testing drops, a vial, and a card with the colours to match against. It works totally fine. While it won’t teach you about automation, it’ll get you familiar with how your system responds to different conditions, what the pH tends to do with the plants you’re growing, and so on. This is all invaluable and I wish I knew it before I started automating. I would have written better code from the beginning.
Dowwie 4y ago
Have you checked out flux.ai for PCB design?
- steve_adams_86 4y ago
  Yes actually, that’s what I’m using to learn along with YouTube. I tried other software, but flux kind of hits a sweet spot for me.
prenoob 4y ago
I'm assuming you have several tanks with ph+ and ph- solutions? Are you using off the shelf ph sensors? How about EC?
- steve_adams_86 4y ago
  That’s right, I’ve dissolved sulphur and potassium bicarbonate into separate containers, and peristaltic pumps dose a small amount every 15 minutes when the nutrient solution goes beyond the acceptable parameters for an hour. 15 minutes is enough time for one dose to register on a read of the pH level so that it doesn’t go too far. As for EC, I can only correct it if it’s too low. If it’s 100 points below where I want it, I dose from two containers of pre mixed nutrient concentrate. They’re in separate containers because they’ll actually precipitate some of their constituents if they’re combined at high concentrations, which is too bad (it would be nice to use only one container). The pH sensor I use is apparently lab grade, but only cost around $70 CAD. It has been holding up just fine for close to a year now. If I were doing this on a larger scale, I think I’d go for one that’s a bit more expensive from atlas scientific. They seem to stand by their products and claim their pH probes will operate for years if taken care of. My EC sensor was quite a bit more — something like $150. I forget where I got it, because I had the idea to build this maybe 10 years ago and that was one of the first components I picked up! Looking around it seems like you can spend quite a bit less now, and it seems like they’re durable.
lifty 4y ago
Do you use fish as well to balance the system or you do it directly using the right chemicals?
- steve_adams_86 4y ago
  I’d love to try using fish some day. I use some buffers I mixed from sulphur and potassium bicarbonate. I get them to an approximate pH and then let the system measure gradually as small amounts are dosed into the system.
TheFattestNinja 4y ago
Amazing idea. Saved for later.
safety1st 4y ago
Would love to see a blog post on this or something!
- modriano 4y ago
  Not OP and not OP's project, but I saw a fantastic automated hydroponic project on YT a few years back that is very similar. YT: [0] Blog Post [1] GitHub for the environmental control system [2] [0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nyqykZK2Ev4 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nyqykZK2Ev4 [1] https://kylegabriel.com/projects/2020/06/automated-hydroponic-system-build.html https://kylegabriel.com/projects/2020/06/automated-hydroponi... [2] https://github.com/kizniche/Mycodo https://github.com/kizniche/Mycodo
  - Dazzler5648 4y ago
    I built a system like Kyle Gabriel's (using his tutorial) and I grow mushrooms with it in a small tent, running Mycodo on a Raspi. This has probably been my most interesting tech I built just for myself, and my sanity. But credit where it's due: thanks Kyle!
    - steve_adams_86 4y ago
      Kyle is amazing. He’s still very active and supporting people with Mycodo. I learned a lot from him.
- steve_adams_86 4y ago
  One of these days I would really like to. It’s funny, I used to write all the time and I loved it. I think I became a bit too critical of myself as I saw my site getting more traffic, and I got a bit too anxious to hit publish. I should get back to it. I’ve been working on a visual editor which generates code you can flash on an arduino with the idea that eventually this could evolve into a little automated gardening platform, but I’m not fully convinced it would be received the way I hope it would. I know a lot of people are into automated gardening, but they might not be the people who would want to use this kind of platform. In any case, I might find out faster if I write about it and see what people think. My friends are certainly into it, but, they’re my friends! Haha. I need some strangers to laugh at my ideas, maybe.
primax 4y ago
I am intrigued and would like to subscribe to your newsletter
system2 4y ago
How do you keep water touching sensors working long term? I tried similar sensors but they all get rusted / oxidized to work properly after a certain time.
- ljlukkar 4y ago
  You need industrial level sensors and the water needs to be flowing constantly through them. I built something similar about 15 years ago and tested many sensors. In the end I had to pay about 1000 dollars for ph and ec meters that did the job reliably. To be honest there is nothing new here. This is how big greenhouses have been operating for decades. In small scale there is more work maintaining the automated setup and calibrating the sensors than it would take to do the measurements and dosing manually.
  - steve_adams_86 4y ago
    I think it can cost quite a bit less now, but you’re right — it isn’t cheap.
- netsectoday 4y ago
  You can use capacitive water sensors taped to the outside of non-capacitive containers (aluminum foil, a resistor, an arduino, and a plastic 5 gallon container), but honestly all you need are DNI timers to "automate" any grow operation. Put your lights and pumps on a schedule and there is absolutely no reason to get more creative. If you do anything besides low-level timers you're making it complicated and brittle with no added benefit.
- steve_adams_86 4y ago
  These sensors are designed to withstand contact with water and to minimize hydrolysis, and I haven’t had issues with that so far. I’ve been running this system for close to a year and they still seem to calibrate just fine.
- rytis 4y ago
  not OP, but one of the tricks is to activate the sensors only when measuring, so there's no constant DC applied to the sensor wires/pads. once you have that, reduce measurement frequency, so to mainimise the time when voltage is applied to the sensors. for example once every hour for moisture is sufficient, and 1/sec isn't really going to help much.
Aerbil313 4y ago
I’m very interested, is it possible for you to open-source it? Also, what are its absolute dependencies? Does it depend on daylight? Fresh air from outside? Stored chemicals? Is water/air recyled? What is the reason behind you making this? I’m preparing for Collapse and want to do such a thing soon. If you can open-source it, it would be very cool and helpful.
- steve_adams_86 4y ago
  > is it possible for you to open-source it? Absolutely, I’d like to work towards contributing useful things to open source gardening technology. Once I have something useful to put into the world I definitely will. > Does it depend on daylight? No, this particular system is totally isolated apart from fresh air pulled in to regulate humidity and temperature. The lights are the most expensive aspect of the system by a wide margin, but they do work extremely effectively. The plants are very happy. I have an older iteration of the system working in an outdoor greenhouse without artificial lighting. It uses fans to regulate air temperature and humidity, but it gets light from the sun. It’s doing fine so far, but the temperature is still relatively lower so growth is slower than in the tent. I’m excited to see what the results are like over summer. > Is water/air recycled? This is an interesting question because at the moment the answer is no, but I have the beginnings of plans to recycle the water. I use a reverse osmosis system to feed into the system gradually (this ensures my water sensors provide reliable readings), and I’m fairly sure I could add a secondary tank to drain old solution into, filter it, and use it as the source for the feed into the RO system and then back into the active tank. Though it’s not necessary now, I think that level of efficiency could be incredible. I’d love to be recycling nutrients as well. I know there’s plenty leftover when a grow is done, but I can’t know what the ratio of each nutrient is in order to rebalance it for the crop I’m growing. I’m sure some growers are able to do this, but I have a feeling it’s a bit beyond me. It seems like a job for a mass spectrometer. That’s possible to DIY in a sane price range, but I will likely need to wait until my kids move out to take that on. I do love the idea in any case — utilizing all of the nutrients and reusing them when possible would be a major accomplishment for me. > What is the reason behind you making this? There are several reasons. One, I eat a lot of greens and they’re getting more expensive. I kept a sheet in Soulver (a sort of natural language math program) which outlines a cost breakdown of a head of lettuce grown hydroponically vs from a store. It eventually hit a point where I could grow it for less than I could buy it for, and it justified jumping in and making it happen. My ROI has worked out fine, so the sheet was correct and it’s not crazy to grow with a system like this (so long as you don’t mind the maintenance, harvesting, trial and error, etc). It has actually worked in favour of growing it myself quite a bit more since I first started and hasn’t shown signs of tilting the other way for a while now. Two, I love learning. The more I learn the more reasons I find to be in awe of the world. Seeing the way the plants grow, understanding the chemistry and biology of the system, accomplishing new things with technology — I find it incredibly fulfilling. It shows my kids that the distance between here and making something interesting or useful happen is simply doing it. First we had an idea, then we had real plants growing almost magically in a system built from scratch. All of that is awesome. Three, like you I see some instability in the world and I want to have a grasp on how I might ease tasks like finding reliable nutrition. I have bags of fertilizer because they’re not terribly expensive and they can help generate good nutrition quickly, easily, and very reliably. Something like the kratky method can actually work really well even without stable power, so long as light and temperature are reasonable. I also have a lot of seeds for sprouting, as they’re an incredible source of easy nutrition in emergencies too. I don’t really want to need these skills for that, but I do want to have practical skills for producing as much food as possible if something were to happen. As far as open sourcing goes, I hope to get a sense for how easy or difficult it is to get up and running with this stuff once I can get it in my friends’ hands. I plan to add a crude web interface for managing environment and automation parameters, and I’d like to figure out a way to sensibly scale out the system. For example, not everyone I’ll be giving it to cares about pH or EC, so they don’t need those components. I could simply not solder things onto their boards, but I’d rather figure out something like using standoffs to join the boards in a stack and gradually add features that way. Kind of like hats on an arduino I guess. As I iron this stuff out I definitely want to put it out in the world. At the moment there are so many superior options in ecosystems like raspberry pi, I feel like I’d be wasting people’s time. I do think a pi is overkill (though potentially complimentary) for this kind of thing though, and the power of a connected microcontroller with MQTT and simple RPC services is way beyond what most people expect.

jacquesm 4y ago

> It produces a lot of greens and herbs If that were NL at this point your whole audience would be on the floor laughing. 'Suuuure...'. What some people won't do to get decent tomatoes.

TeMPOraL 4y ago
Not from NL, but already started smiling at "hydroponic" :).
sirsinsalot 4y ago
Hey don't judge my pursuit of dank tomatoes
- HeyLaughingBoy 4y ago
  Fingers crossed for full legalization in Minnesota today. Including grow your own!
  - sirsinsalot 4y ago
    Tomatoes are already legal i've no idea what you're talking about.
- RankingMember 4y ago
  Tomacco!
nemonemo 4y ago
Sorry for my ignorance, but is NL Netherlands? Also, could you give me some more context on why the people would be laughing?
- madmads 4y ago
  NL is meant as Netherlands here and the context is that since you can't talk about growing cannabis in the open, people talk about their "vegetable" gardens or "herbs" instead. The comment you're responding to is implying that the grow tent is used to grow cannabis but he's covering it up by saying it's a vegetable garden.
  - jacquesm 4y ago
    Almost: if it were NL I would imply that it is to grow cannabis but since the OP is obviously 100% sincere I don't doubt they're doing the legit thing.
RajT88 4y ago
You joke, but I have heard radio ads for hydroponic supplies in Canada, which very much had the tone of "wink, wink y'know for your veggie garden". There was even a chuckling group of people in the background when they mentioned "veggies". This was in Toronto around 2011.
steve_adams_86 4y ago
Haha, I forget sometimes that I’ve totally normalized growing greens and other people associate it with cannabis. I’ve had a couple people come into my workshop and end up looking suspiciously at the grow tent humming along on the corner. When they see that it’s actually just lettuce I think they’re kind of surprised.
- jacquesm 4y ago
  Np, I just thought it was very funny. I've had a similar thing here where I ordered 500 ziplock backs and the guy on the other side goes '5 gram or 25 gram'? So I asked why the bags are so heavy and hilarity ensued. I needed them as parts bags for Lego... but it turns out they almost exclusively sell to gardeners.
- akiselev 4y ago
  Likewise! You should have seen the look on the landlord's face before I opened it up to show them the mess of cucumber plants in space buckets (sidenote: do not grow vining plants in a grow tent!)

itsmeste 4y ago

Do you know of a good source of information on how to recognize any plant's nutrient deficiencies accurately?

steve_adams_86 4y ago
Unfortunately no, there’s a lot of misinformation everywhere I look. I try to record my own experiences and stay on top of tracking results so I can know what helps under which conditions. Hydro seems to have mostly eliminated those concerns for me, though my outside garden still runs into all kinds of problems that are tricky to diagnose.
akeck 4y ago
Check out Bunnie Huang's post from Covid lockdown: https://www.bunniestudios.com/blog/?p=6481 https://www.bunniestudios.com/blog/?p=6481
- steve_adams_86 4y ago
  This is awesome, thank you!

thendrill 4y ago

Can you please share a list of the sensors you use? I am very interested in this.

steve_adams_86 4y ago
I’ve been collecting them over time so I don’t have everything handy, but here are some: pH: https://www.dfrobot.com/product-2069.html https://www.dfrobot.com/product-2069.html EC: https://www.dfrobot.com/product-2565.html https://www.dfrobot.com/product-2565.html Water temperature: https://www.adafruit.com/product/381 https://www.adafruit.com/product/381 CO2: https://www.adafruit.com/product/5190 https://www.adafruit.com/product/5190 Air temp and humidity: https://www.adafruit.com/product/3251 https://www.adafruit.com/product/3251 There are others but I’ll have to dig into it! I think you could spend less on alternatives, too.
- Kapura 4y ago
  thank you! i am also super interested in something like this
  - steve_adams_86 4y ago
    You should absolutely go for it. Start even simpler and with lower investment if you want, too. These systems are easy to get running and you can gradually add sensors and automation as you go. I wish I started a lot earlier, but I was constantly trying to have the right stuff, or enough stuff to get started with the perfect setup. It turns out that makes no sense. You’re going to make mistakes, learn stuff, figure out what you like and don’t like, etc. Starting with a bare bones setup using NFT, not even in a grow tent necessarily, you’ll figure out really quickly what you want to do with it and how to move forward. Something I also didn’t really understand or consider is how easy it is to add sensors or update firmware gradually. Each of the sensors I use is useful independently or together; it’s totally fine to start with just one. Though most important is arguably water and air temperature; you’ll use those to accurately adjust other sensor readings, and in the short term, they’re immediately critical to plant health. I’ve got a small system running on my old deep water culture equipment in my outdoor greenhouse, and I actually check its pH with plain old pH testing drops, a vial, and a card with the colours to match against. It works totally fine. While it won’t teach you about automation, it’ll get you familiar with how your system responds to different conditions, what the pH tends to do with the plants you’re growing, and so on. This is all invaluable and I wish I knew it before I started automating. I would have written better code from the beginning.

Dowwie 4y ago

Have you checked out flux.ai for PCB design?

steve_adams_86 4y ago
Yes actually, that’s what I’m using to learn along with YouTube. I tried other software, but flux kind of hits a sweet spot for me.

prenoob 4y ago

I'm assuming you have several tanks with ph+ and ph- solutions? Are you using off the shelf ph sensors? How about EC?

steve_adams_86 4y ago
That’s right, I’ve dissolved sulphur and potassium bicarbonate into separate containers, and peristaltic pumps dose a small amount every 15 minutes when the nutrient solution goes beyond the acceptable parameters for an hour. 15 minutes is enough time for one dose to register on a read of the pH level so that it doesn’t go too far. As for EC, I can only correct it if it’s too low. If it’s 100 points below where I want it, I dose from two containers of pre mixed nutrient concentrate. They’re in separate containers because they’ll actually precipitate some of their constituents if they’re combined at high concentrations, which is too bad (it would be nice to use only one container). The pH sensor I use is apparently lab grade, but only cost around $70 CAD. It has been holding up just fine for close to a year now. If I were doing this on a larger scale, I think I’d go for one that’s a bit more expensive from atlas scientific. They seem to stand by their products and claim their pH probes will operate for years if taken care of. My EC sensor was quite a bit more — something like $150. I forget where I got it, because I had the idea to build this maybe 10 years ago and that was one of the first components I picked up! Looking around it seems like you can spend quite a bit less now, and it seems like they’re durable.

lifty 4y ago

Do you use fish as well to balance the system or you do it directly using the right chemicals?

steve_adams_86 4y ago
I’d love to try using fish some day. I use some buffers I mixed from sulphur and potassium bicarbonate. I get them to an approximate pH and then let the system measure gradually as small amounts are dosed into the system.

TheFattestNinja 4y ago

Amazing idea. Saved for later.

safety1st 4y ago

Would love to see a blog post on this or something!

modriano 4y ago
Not OP and not OP's project, but I saw a fantastic automated hydroponic project on YT a few years back that is very similar. YT: [0] Blog Post [1] GitHub for the environmental control system [2] [0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nyqykZK2Ev4 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nyqykZK2Ev4 [1] https://kylegabriel.com/projects/2020/06/automated-hydroponic-system-build.html https://kylegabriel.com/projects/2020/06/automated-hydroponi... [2] https://github.com/kizniche/Mycodo https://github.com/kizniche/Mycodo
- Dazzler5648 4y ago
  I built a system like Kyle Gabriel's (using his tutorial) and I grow mushrooms with it in a small tent, running Mycodo on a Raspi. This has probably been my most interesting tech I built just for myself, and my sanity. But credit where it's due: thanks Kyle!
  - steve_adams_86 4y ago
    Kyle is amazing. He’s still very active and supporting people with Mycodo. I learned a lot from him.
steve_adams_86 4y ago
One of these days I would really like to. It’s funny, I used to write all the time and I loved it. I think I became a bit too critical of myself as I saw my site getting more traffic, and I got a bit too anxious to hit publish. I should get back to it. I’ve been working on a visual editor which generates code you can flash on an arduino with the idea that eventually this could evolve into a little automated gardening platform, but I’m not fully convinced it would be received the way I hope it would. I know a lot of people are into automated gardening, but they might not be the people who would want to use this kind of platform. In any case, I might find out faster if I write about it and see what people think. My friends are certainly into it, but, they’re my friends! Haha. I need some strangers to laugh at my ideas, maybe.

primax 4y ago

I am intrigued and would like to subscribe to your newsletter

system2 4y ago

How do you keep water touching sensors working long term? I tried similar sensors but they all get rusted / oxidized to work properly after a certain time.

ljlukkar 4y ago
You need industrial level sensors and the water needs to be flowing constantly through them. I built something similar about 15 years ago and tested many sensors. In the end I had to pay about 1000 dollars for ph and ec meters that did the job reliably. To be honest there is nothing new here. This is how big greenhouses have been operating for decades. In small scale there is more work maintaining the automated setup and calibrating the sensors than it would take to do the measurements and dosing manually.
- steve_adams_86 4y ago
  I think it can cost quite a bit less now, but you’re right — it isn’t cheap.
netsectoday 4y ago
You can use capacitive water sensors taped to the outside of non-capacitive containers (aluminum foil, a resistor, an arduino, and a plastic 5 gallon container), but honestly all you need are DNI timers to "automate" any grow operation. Put your lights and pumps on a schedule and there is absolutely no reason to get more creative. If you do anything besides low-level timers you're making it complicated and brittle with no added benefit.
steve_adams_86 4y ago
These sensors are designed to withstand contact with water and to minimize hydrolysis, and I haven’t had issues with that so far. I’ve been running this system for close to a year and they still seem to calibrate just fine.
rytis 4y ago
not OP, but one of the tricks is to activate the sensors only when measuring, so there's no constant DC applied to the sensor wires/pads. once you have that, reduce measurement frequency, so to mainimise the time when voltage is applied to the sensors. for example once every hour for moisture is sufficient, and 1/sec isn't really going to help much.

Aerbil313 4y ago

I’m very interested, is it possible for you to open-source it? Also, what are its absolute dependencies? Does it depend on daylight? Fresh air from outside? Stored chemicals? Is water/air recyled? What is the reason behind you making this? I’m preparing for Collapse and want to do such a thing soon. If you can open-source it, it would be very cool and helpful.

steve_adams_86 4y ago
> is it possible for you to open-source it? Absolutely, I’d like to work towards contributing useful things to open source gardening technology. Once I have something useful to put into the world I definitely will. > Does it depend on daylight? No, this particular system is totally isolated apart from fresh air pulled in to regulate humidity and temperature. The lights are the most expensive aspect of the system by a wide margin, but they do work extremely effectively. The plants are very happy. I have an older iteration of the system working in an outdoor greenhouse without artificial lighting. It uses fans to regulate air temperature and humidity, but it gets light from the sun. It’s doing fine so far, but the temperature is still relatively lower so growth is slower than in the tent. I’m excited to see what the results are like over summer. > Is water/air recycled? This is an interesting question because at the moment the answer is no, but I have the beginnings of plans to recycle the water. I use a reverse osmosis system to feed into the system gradually (this ensures my water sensors provide reliable readings), and I’m fairly sure I could add a secondary tank to drain old solution into, filter it, and use it as the source for the feed into the RO system and then back into the active tank. Though it’s not necessary now, I think that level of efficiency could be incredible. I’d love to be recycling nutrients as well. I know there’s plenty leftover when a grow is done, but I can’t know what the ratio of each nutrient is in order to rebalance it for the crop I’m growing. I’m sure some growers are able to do this, but I have a feeling it’s a bit beyond me. It seems like a job for a mass spectrometer. That’s possible to DIY in a sane price range, but I will likely need to wait until my kids move out to take that on. I do love the idea in any case — utilizing all of the nutrients and reusing them when possible would be a major accomplishment for me. > What is the reason behind you making this? There are several reasons. One, I eat a lot of greens and they’re getting more expensive. I kept a sheet in Soulver (a sort of natural language math program) which outlines a cost breakdown of a head of lettuce grown hydroponically vs from a store. It eventually hit a point where I could grow it for less than I could buy it for, and it justified jumping in and making it happen. My ROI has worked out fine, so the sheet was correct and it’s not crazy to grow with a system like this (so long as you don’t mind the maintenance, harvesting, trial and error, etc). It has actually worked in favour of growing it myself quite a bit more since I first started and hasn’t shown signs of tilting the other way for a while now. Two, I love learning. The more I learn the more reasons I find to be in awe of the world. Seeing the way the plants grow, understanding the chemistry and biology of the system, accomplishing new things with technology — I find it incredibly fulfilling. It shows my kids that the distance between here and making something interesting or useful happen is simply doing it. First we had an idea, then we had real plants growing almost magically in a system built from scratch. All of that is awesome. Three, like you I see some instability in the world and I want to have a grasp on how I might ease tasks like finding reliable nutrition. I have bags of fertilizer because they’re not terribly expensive and they can help generate good nutrition quickly, easily, and very reliably. Something like the kratky method can actually work really well even without stable power, so long as light and temperature are reasonable. I also have a lot of seeds for sprouting, as they’re an incredible source of easy nutrition in emergencies too. I don’t really want to need these skills for that, but I do want to have practical skills for producing as much food as possible if something were to happen. As far as open sourcing goes, I hope to get a sense for how easy or difficult it is to get up and running with this stuff once I can get it in my friends’ hands. I plan to add a crude web interface for managing environment and automation parameters, and I’d like to figure out a way to sensibly scale out the system. For example, not everyone I’ll be giving it to cares about pH or EC, so they don’t need those components. I could simply not solder things onto their boards, but I’d rather figure out something like using standoffs to join the boards in a stack and gradually add features that way. Kind of like hats on an arduino I guess. As I iron this stuff out I definitely want to put it out in the world. At the moment there are so many superior options in ecosystems like raspberry pi, I feel like I’d be wasting people’s time. I do think a pi is overkill (though potentially complimentary) for this kind of thing though, and the power of a connected microcontroller with MQTT and simple RPC services is way beyond what most people expect.