Get your Geek on and control your grow room with Arduino!

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Mak'er Grow

Well-Known Member
Mak'er Grow said:
I just think more parts/converters then more possible failures are possible.
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I see it like this...
I can do converters and so on and know how it all works and fix what ever goes wrong, but if I make one for my semi-dumb cousin that just wants to grow and something fails then I'm the one fixing it for him, but if I keep parts simple and limit it to a minimum then he may be able to just replace a simple board here or there if need be.
I just wouldn't want him to be replacing parts until it worked...it could get costly.
 
Timezone

Timezone

Well-Known Member
Much heat coming off those solid state relays? I was thinking about those instead of relays but was concerned about the heat when carrying a 15A load. The ones I considered required large heat sinks.
 
M

Mak'er Grow

Well-Known Member
Timezone said:
Much heat coming off those solid state relays? I was thinking about those instead of relays but was concerned about the heat when carrying a 15A load. The ones I considered required large heat sinks.
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The SSR's only run the 120v pumps that draw I think 8W. The SSR's are only rated for 2amps...thats why I swapped 2 of the 4 out for 5amp relays...didn't pay attention when I bought them and my lights pull about 3.5amps so they fried after about a day...lol
Larger SSRs are hard to find at a reasonable cost I find. They also get very big...5amp SSR was like +4cm compared to these at about 2cm...in length.
 
Timezone

Timezone

Well-Known Member
Mak'er Grow said:
I can do converters and so on and know how it all works and fix what ever goes wrong, but if I make one for my semi-dumb cousin that just wants to grow and something fails then I'm the one fixing it for him, but if I keep parts simple and limit it to a minimum then he may be able to just replace a simple board here or there if need be.
I just wouldn't want him to be replacing parts until it worked...it could get costly.
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I understand.

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But sooner or later you may require one or two.
 
M

Mak'er Grow

Well-Known Member
ToFarGone said:
I’ll be honest way to many posts and so much information to fully read through :):blsmoke: however I’d love to see some of the codes you guys are running
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I'd post mine, but its a mess still...lol
I have lines in there that really doesn't do anything besides adjust values on the fly...like I can input "h" and it adds an hour to the time...used for my 2nd test mega that doesn't have a RTC so I can test on/off times and not have to wait hours. ;)
 
M

Mak'er Grow

Well-Known Member
Timezone said:
I understand.

View attachment 4455886
But sooner or later you may require one or two.
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Oh I know I will for sure. I bought 2 tiny cameras that run at 3.3 and the little bit of reading I have done on them says they run at 3.3...so when I get to them I'm sure its either buy more/new or use converters...lol
And something about non-fifo...would have to go back and re-read, but they aren't needed yet. :)
 
M

Mak'er Grow

Well-Known Member
I have only managed to get the relays working properly, the 2.8" LCD, RTC showing date and time, temp sensors reading/displaying...but now these will be getting updated, reading info from SD for timers and just started coding the touch screen.
So far its @ 603 lines...lol
 
M

Mak'er Grow

Well-Known Member
Timezone said:
So are parts of mine.

We need to talk about time and how it's handled on the various microcontrollers, SOCs (System On Chip)
and SBCs (Single Board Computer).
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Not sure what you mean. I'm using a RTC (real time clock) shield that runs from a 2032 battery if power goes out.
When Arduino boots up it reads the shield and then displays the time on the LCD.
Works great unless the battery dies.
 
Timezone

Timezone

Well-Known Member
I'm working with five Arduino IDE, C/C++, programs on the four ESP8266s and an ESP32, and one Python program on the Pi. I'm running the Pi as a MQTT broker/server and Node-RED to tie everything together.
 
friedguy

friedguy

Well-Known Member
I had a crazy, over-developed system that I made with arduinos as remote sensor controllers and a pi as the head using SQL for communication between them all. User variables were set using a control and monitoring website. Controlled EC, pH, water pumps, fans, co2, IR (for phytochrome manipulation), UV, auto switched to flower mode at a user set interval, logged all data every minute, etc. Worked great but was way overkill.

I made a new, simpler system that only controls temp, rh and co2. My lights are now controlled with a standard timer and no more phytochrome manipulation. UV is on as long as the lights are on. Gone organic, so watering is ro using blumats. Less is sometimes more.

What sensors are you running for the grow room environment? I played with quite a few but settled on the K30 for co2 and the sht-31 for temp/RH.
 
M

Mak'er Grow

Well-Known Member
friedguy said:
I had a crazy, over-developed system that I made with arduinos as remote sensor controllers and a pi as the head using SQL for communication between them all. User variables were set using a control and monitoring website. Controlled EC, pH, water pumps, fans, co2, IR (for phytochrome manipulation), UV, auto switched to flower mode at a user set interval, logged all data every minute, etc. Worked great but was way overkill.

I made a new, simpler system that only controls temp, rh and co2. My lights are now controlled with a standard timer and no more phytochrome manipulation. UV is on as long as the lights are on. Gone organic, so watering is ro using blumats. Less is sometimes more.

What sensors are you running for the grow room environment? I played with quite a few but settled on the K30 for co2 and the sht-31 for temp/RH.
Click to expand...
I'm tryig to keep mine simple as well.
I use basic temp/humidity/pressure/altitude all in 1 sensors...BME280.
I don't use CO2 so no need for that sensor myself.
 
Timezone

Timezone

Well-Known Member
friedguy said:
What sensors are you running for the grow room environment? I played with quite a few but settled on the K30 for co2 and the sht-31 for temp/RH.
Click to expand...
I'm using a DHT22 for temperature and humidity, and a DFRobot Gravity: Analog Infrared CO2 Sensor. I'm using capacitive soil sensors. In progress is adding a PZEM-004T-R3 to each outlet box to track electrical consumption.
 
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