MARS HYDRO CUP - Lilac Diesel & Birthday Banger -Mainline Grow w/MARS HYDRO TS2000W & Home Assistant Automation

[RadicalRoss]

That just the cheapo aquarium aerator I am also using?

I definitely notice my plants sagging before the lights go off, they learn their routine pretty well. It's cool with the night time camera in your time lapse, because you can also observe them "waking up" a bit before the lights come on.

 

[SpawnOfVader]

That just the cheapo aquarium aerator I am also using?

I definitely notice my plants sagging before the lights go off, they learn their routine pretty well. It's cool with the night time camera in your time lapse, because you can also observe them "waking up" a bit before the lights come on.

Nah I got an even cheaper one.... (like $9 after tax including a mini air stone)... and I've got the air stone tied right by the output of this little $10 pump I'm using for circulation.

The night time camera is cool but the magnetic mounting plate that comes with the wyze cam is a PITA to keep mounted on the PVC. Ordered 4x cheap plastic mounts that should be a little more secure that I'm going to permanently attach to the frame about every 8-10" so I can just have all my mounting points secure. Even with the mounting complaints, for a $25 camera with night vision, time lapse, free cloud storage, and home assistant compatibility (if you flash it to a custom RTSP compatible firmware). Gonna invest in a few more to stick in weather proof casings and use for my home's external security cam.

Also working on developing a Wyze cam with weatherproof case mounted to a post with a weather proof battery bank to run it off of....
I had a Monarch cocoon under my office window this year but missed it hatching...gonna have a portable unit for cool random crap (you can run it offline and save the time lapse to a memory card so it would be perfect)...

 

[SpawnOfVader]

Well I really ended up with a much more uneven canopy than normal. Tallest colas are ~8" above the shorter colas. Total canopy depth is about 21"

I have a feeling I'm going to have to chop those tall colas and drop the lights to finish off the rest over an extra week or two this time. The Birthday Banger girls are the more compact two in the middle and the four along the outside are all Lilac Diesel (the tall branches in the middle/back are Lilac Diesel as well)

 

[SpawnOfVader]

All that comes to mind is Little Nicky... (so hairy)

 

[SpawnOfVader]

Trying to keep my tent expanded even with negative pressure- it's a DIY rebuild of a crap tent and it's so loose the sides REALLY suck in. Added an extra intake to reduce the negative pressure a bit and used 550 cord to make x's on the three sides that don't open and a removable support line for the side with the door. Seems to be helping a ton- need to rig up a filter for the new intake still.



Now for anyone not familiar with my methods, the nerve center of my grow is a custom Home Assistant environment (running on an 8 GB Raspberry Pi 4B)... as of right now I've just got remote monitoring and control of my watering systems. I will be continuing to build this out as I have motivation.

Tomorrow's project: Flash SONOFF smart outlets so that I can track my light's power usage and eventually use HA to control the light cycles (so I can do things like add 1-2 minutes of dark extra per day throughout the flower cycle or whatever). This will also allow me to track power and control on/off state for any device (using the smart outlets).

Upcoming:
1. Soil humidity sensors and automated watering
2. Redundant auto flood cutoff switches for when the above fails
3. External access (right now only available on network, need to go over my firewall rules before opening that up)
4. Wyze camera in veg tent
5. Text alerts

 

[420burn420]

taking it to next level . remote monitoring

 

[SpawnOfVader]

taking it to next level . remote monitoring

Remote monitoring and remote automation.... everything that has an action can be triggered so:

Once I add soil moisture sensors it gets scripted so something like "when average moisture of all pots goes below 'x', turn on watering pump for one hour" or something like that.

or: if humidity goes above 'x' turn on dehumidifier, turn off dehumidifier if temp goes above 'y' or humidity drops below 'z'

...also long term monitoring (temp trends month to month or year to year etc.)

I still can't believe how well these girls are doing. From the first day of flower (pictured on left) to yesterday (19 days later - on the right) there's a good 14" of growth even with the training.

 

[420burn420]

Next step is to automate light level intensity !!!
Are you coding it yourself ? Also I use Fortinet firewall it comes with a free license for a vpn tunnel.

 

[SpawnOfVader]

I s

Next step is to automate light level intensity !!!
Are you coding it yourself ? Also I use Fortinet firewall it comes with a free license for a vpn tunnel.

I mean home assistant as itself is a pre-packaged OS. As far as scripting and custom integrations yea I'm coding it myself.

I scored a bunch of free Cisco Meraki demo gear awhile back so I've got a physical firewall/switch/ap/router all separate at my house. I just haven't bothered to set up my VPN yet since I hadn't needed remote access before.

 

[SpawnOfVader]

Next step is to automate light level intensity !!!
Are you coding it yourself ? Also I use Fortinet firewall it comes with a free license for a vpn tunnel.

The light level intensity bit is possible. I just need something like a storm controller that my Pi can take over. I was looking at how those controllers can manage individual strips in a DIY build...so for instance let my lights dim at the end of the day but keep my IR/Red/Far Red live for an extra 15 minutes (sunset) etc....

 

[SpawnOfVader]

Comparative Grow – Seedstockers | The Vault

The Vault Cannabis Seeds Store is back for another mind-blowing Comparative Grow, this time in partnership with Seedstockers

www.cannabis-seeds-store.co.uk

Check this out as well... says you need a quality grow journal, but figure you can try it out anyway. My journal isnt complete, but its pretty damn close to the end so Im hoping I qualify. The strains look pretty tasty, ESPECIALLY as a freebie lol

You did it friend! Lol they accepted my entry so free seeds and T-Shirt all in exchange for growing their fem seeds and posting some pictures/info on the strains as they grow.

 

[BluntMoniker]

You did it friend! Lol they accepted my entry so free seeds and T-Shirt all in exchange for growing their fem seeds and posting some pictures/info on the strains as they grow.

Hi,



Your entry to the comparative as been accepted and it was posted on Friday



Kind Regards,
Cameron

The Vault Support


Same! Excited to see gow everyones grows go. Of course this happens a week after i popped a seed though >_>

 

[SpawnOfVader]

And it's DONE!!! Another timelapse update for all my peeps on RIU

 

[420burn420]

The light level intensity bit is possible. I just need something like a storm controller that my Pi can take over. I was looking at how those controllers can manage individual strips in a DIY build...so for instance let my lights dim at the end of the day but keep my IR/Red/Far Red live for an extra 15 minutes (sunset) etc....

I'm not too familiar with raspberry PI, if that's what your referring to. I do use PI-Hole installed on Linux (Ubuntu)to block ads for my home network.

 

[SpawnOfVader]

I'm not too familiar with raspberry PI, if that's what your referring to. I do use PI-Hole installed on Linux (Ubuntu)to block ads for my home network.

It's just a cheap little micro computer. It does come with "GPIO" pins so you can directly wire them to lights/fans/etc.
It also is loaded with a linux based OS that is UBER basic. Then you just need to install (or code if none are available) little bits of code to interface via common protocols.

My camera for instance is a Wyze cam flashed to a basic "Real Time Streaming Protocol" firmware and I just operate it as a dumb IP camera for the most part.

All my sensors are Ecowitt and someone already set it up as an integration so not much coding to do....just input the IP of the sensors, specify things like update freq etc. and it's basically good to go.

The OS and all integrations I've seen are 100% free/open source... a Pi (model 4b like I use) can run like $40-100 depending on if you also need to buy a case/power supply/etc. or if you're DIY'ing it all.

 

[SpawnOfVader]

On a less fun note, seeing some signs of nitrogen deficiency on my strongest plants....
I had never vegged indoors quite this long and I really should have supplemented their feeding some (5 gallons really isn't that much soil for big plants).

Going to mix up a weaker feeding of my veg. nutes for them....my flowering nutes and late flowering nutes have too little nitrogen to make much of a difference (they're already getting those and it's obviously not quite doing it).

If I had fish emulsion sitting around I'd use that but I'm out ATM and broke.



The temps in there are definitely not low enough to cause any issues with the leaves.

 

[SpawnOfVader]

Well if the issue was nitrogen deficiency it's taken care of. I was in my LGS talking about pallet pricing for bagged soils and randomly mentioned the nutrient deficiency.

The gave me Sensi Cal Mag Xtra and Bio Balancer (both with some nitrogen level) along with some other random bottled samples I haven't even gone through yet.

Went ahead and fed the Sensi Cal Mag Xtra just to get some liquid nitrogen to the roots....everything else I have around is powdered organic nutes and will take a bit to make any difference. (the sensi isn't OMRI listed so it's not on my normal product list...but free)

 

[SpawnOfVader]

Getting that pretty early flower keef, starting to fatten up a bit as well.

 

[SpawnOfVader]

Best thing about keeping a grow journal? Taking a look at progress after the fact (it seems so slow when it happens but look at what exactly one month did to my girls).

 

[SpawnOfVader]

Flower (Week 4 Day 6)

Well a little more lime green than I would like still BUT the worst of the nitrogen deficiency seems to be past. Going to do plain water the next 1-2 waterings and monitor but I'm hoping that last round will be enough to fix the immediate issues.

Finally got around to ordering more Mykos (which I'll apply today). A little late for it to do a ton for these plants but it can't hurt.. going to mix it in with distilled water and molasses... Also needed to apply for all my clones/seeds/seedlings.



I am seeing some rust spots that look like a cal/mag deficiency. As I just fed them cal/mag yesterday anyways I'm going to watch and hope it gets better/isn't a lockout issue. It's only on the two plants that I was already fighting a nitrogen deficiency in/my strongest girls so I'm hoping I just under fed them and vegged for two weeks longer than normal at the same time (much easier to fix a deficiency).