Thermoelectric wine cooler drying and curing - DIY

pahpah-cee said:
I appreciate you running experiments with this. I went a different route and went slow and cold. I keep it at 58F and only work the RH down 0.5% a day. Usually it’s done in about 2 weeks if the fridge is fully loaded.

what we really need is someone to build us a Adurino controller that will automate the dehumidifier to run specific parameters.
the Cannatrol does some funky shit according to their patent. I’ve concluded that they don’t use a Dehum but an actual heating element to control it. I think our concept is better since it adds heat and rips moisture out of the air.
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Correct me if I'm wrong, But isn't a dehumidifier just a heating element?
 
Hook Daddy said:
I only chopped about a third of my plants, so next week I will probably run another load at 58f as well. I was thinking the same as you with a controller. When you set the dehumidifier low in the beginning the cooler rises in temp before the dehumidifier shuts off. If you could program the cooler to kick on before the temp starts rising that would help. I’m also thinking it might be beneficial to shorten the difference rh on the Inkbird to only one or two %RH. In fact I might go try that right now just to see what it does.
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bongsmilie So what if we just go the lazy route and buy another inkbird controller for temperature.

Plug the RH controller into the Temperature controller. Have the temp controller turn off (which would turn off the RH controller) once it hits the desired limits. this would shut off the Dehum and let the fridge cool it back down until it’s back in our parameters which would kick back on the Dehum.


I’ve been running shorter intervals with mine. The issue is just the rising temps have to be watched out for. I also don’t run the Dehum for the first day or two. It takes a while for the RH to settle and the fridge is still dripping the RH.
 
TCH said:
Correct me if I'm wrong, But isn't a dehumidifier just a heating element?
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Actually the dehumidifier is another tec (thermoelectric cooler) just like the cooler itself. The difference is on the cooler the cold side of both tecs are inside the cooler and the heated side is outside, both with fans to keep them from over heating or cooling. The dehumidifier has both internally, and the condensation created runs down the fins of the heat sink into the collection tank, or in our case the drain of the cooler. Both the heating side and cooling side are in the cooler, so in general when it’s running it’s heats the inside of the cooler some.
 
pahpah-cee said:
bongsmilie So what if we just go the lazy route and buy another inkbird controller for temperature.

Plug the RH controller into the Temperature controller. Have the temp controller turn off (which would turn off the RH controller) once it hits the desired limits. this would shut off the Dehum and let the fridge cool it back down until it’s back in our parameters which would kick back on the Dehum.


I’ve been running shorter intervals with mine. The issue is just the rising temps have to be watched out for. I also don’t run the Dehum for the first day or two. It takes a while for the RH to settle and the fridge is still dripping the RH.
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Have you had issues where the temp keeps rising? Just curious because I haven’t seen that. I have seen at the most a 3 degree rise above what is set, then right back down once the dehumidifier turns off. I don’t think that will have much effect in the end, especially now that I know cannatrol sets theirs at 68 by default. I just changed my settings to 62f, 61.5 rh, and a difference value of 2%. I’ll let it settle for an hour or two and check on it.
 
Hook Daddy said:
Have you had issues where the temp keeps rising? Just curious because I haven’t seen that. I have seen at the most a 3 degree rise above what is set, then right back down once the dehumidifier turns off. I don’t think that will have much effect in the end, especially now that I know cannatrol sets theirs at 68 by default. I just changed my settings to 62f, 61.5 rh, and a difference value of 2%. I’ll let it settle for an hour or two and check on it.
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Only had an issue with temperature when my difference value was large and I tried to drop the RH too fast with fresh nugs. I think it got it up to 73F before I noticed I have the inkbird value to low.
 
pahpah-cee said:
Only had an issue with temperature when my difference value was large and I tried to drop the RH too fast with fresh nugs. I think it got it up to 73F before I noticed I have the inkbird value to low.
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I see, that would worry me as well. it definitely has to come down in steps. This is my first round putting it in fresh and not letting it dry a day or two first, and it seems to be working well.
 
Hook Daddy said:
I see, that would worry me as well. it definitely has to come down in steps. This is my first round putting it in fresh and not letting it dry a day or two first, and it seems to be working well.
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Yeah, it definitely seems that with fresh stuff straight off the plant, the baby steps are the move. Otherwise, trying to get to the low humidity out of the gate would warm it up so much and both the fridge and the dehumidifier would be working non stop.
 
So earlier I changed the settings to 61.5 RH and 62 f with the difference value for rh at 2%. I just sat and watched an entire cycle which only took about 12 minutes. It reached high humidity at 63.5% and the dehumidifier kicked on. The humidity rose to 64.4 before starting to drop, and at 61.5 the dehumidifier kicked back on. By the time it kicked on the temp was at 64, so a 2 degree rise above the setting, not bad. Obviously the cooler was now on, so the temp dropped back to 62, and the rh dropped to 59.8 before rising again, so 1.7% below the set value, again not bad and still above my desired 58% final finish. The internal hygrometers are reading between 63% and 66%, and since they are in the front so I can see them through the glass door and the Inkbird probe is on the back wall it makes sense, they get in sync when the buds stop giving off water and settle in, which is when they are dry and start curing. I think everything is working just as expected if not better. Computer programming of on and off times might improve things slightly, but I don’t think it would make an actual difference. I’ve never heard of anyone that said their room was 2 degrees off in temp ruin a cure. In the mid east US I couldn’t keep my room under 70% rh with ac and dehumidifiers, and in winter I couldn’t keep it above 40%, so I am quite happy with these numbers. My electric bill was through the roof trying to keep a room at 60/60 so to me it’s a no brainer.
 
A quick check this morning and everything is going well. The entire cycle took about 8 minutes, the temp never changed and the cooler never kicked on, only the dehumidifier. It is still set at 61.5 with a 2% difference. According to the Inkbird the overrun was from 59.9 to 62.3 so not bad. I lowered the rh setting to 61.
 
Hollatchaboy said:
Finished mine this morning...

View attachment 5311407View attachment 5311408

Probably gonna chop this coming weekend. Until then I have a box of baking soda in it. I can smell the silicone mesh.

It holds 15c easily (I can't figure out how to get Fahrenheit.. lol). Humidity is easily controlled right now, but I don't have anything in it yet.
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If you hold the far right button in for around 4 seconds it will change from Celsius to Fahrenheit. Looks good, I’ve never used the silicone mats so not sure about the smell, but the baking soda should absorb that quick.
 
Hook Daddy said:
If you hold the far right button in for around 4 seconds it will change from Celsius to Fahrenheit. Looks good, I’ve never used the silicone mats so not sure about the smell, but the baking soda should absorb that quick.
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I'll have to try it when I get home. I thought I tried that, but maybe I didn't hold it down long enough. I never looked at the instructions. Lol

The mats themselves have a rubbery odor to them. Probably not a big deal though. It's not overwhelming.

Overall, I think it's going to work well.
 
Hollatchaboy said:
I'll have to try it when I get home. I thought I tried that, but maybe I didn't hold it down long enough. I never looked at the instructions. Lol

The mats themselves have a rubbery odor to them. Probably not a big deal though. It's not overwhelming.

Overall, I think it's going to work well.
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If the baking soda doesn't kill the smell quickly, you may try setting them out in the sun to offgas a bit. May help speed up the process
 
I'm going to put one together using an ESP (it's a microcontroller like arduino but with wifi) with a temp/rH sensor.
My plan is to switch the cooling element of the fridge to keep the temp stable. If the temp is low switch the dehumidifier as required to lower the humidity. If the temp is too high (the fridge cant keep up with the waste heat) the dehumidifier stays off.

That should eliminate the need to adjust the rH setpoint manually in the beginning.
 
Just a quick update. Going on day 5 of this dry/cure and everything is still going well. I got a new @Inkbird IBS-TH3-PLUS-WiFi to make it easier to monitor both temp and humidity, it’s working great. My temp is staying very steady, and humidity is as expected so I’m going to drop my dehumidifier setting to 59% keeping the difference value at 2% and temp at 62f and let it go another day.

Here’s how the IBS-TH3 app looks, only a .1f drift in temp and 3% rh difference, all is going as planned. I don’t have much data stored yet, but I think the Inkbird’s graphing will give a great picture of an overall dry.

42DA83E5-B383-4334-92CB-D44A5DE99A7A.png
 
Hook Daddy said:
Just a quick update. Going on day 5 of this dry/cure and everything is still going well. I got a new @Inkbird IBS-TH3-PLUS-WiFi to make it easier to monitor both temp and humidity, it’s working great. My temp is staying very steady, and humidity is as expected so I’m going to drop my dehumidifier setting to 59% keeping the difference value at 2% and temp at 62f and let it go another day.

Here’s how the IBS-TH3 app looks, only a .1f drift in temp and 3% rh difference, all is going as planned. I don’t have much data stored yet, but I think the Inkbird’s graphing will give a great picture of an overall dry.

View attachment 5311797
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Sadly I can't get either of my two to pair and their support response is always lagging and now wants a video of what, a reconnect message? I give up and so I'm concerned about using any of their products on my network.
 
curious2garden said:
Sadly I can't get either of my two to pair and their support response is always lagging and now wants a video of what, a reconnect message? I give up and so I'm concerned about using any of their products on my network.
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Inkbird doesn’t like 5G networks. Try a dedicated 2.5 wifi channel and you may get better results.

truth be told; I have a constant issue with their products randomly disconnecting from the wifi and I have to manually add them again. Ive had months of no issues and random weeks where Im constantly dropping connection.
 
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