MY True HP Aero Plug&Play Pods

Atomizer said:

I`ll have to keep on squinting until i can find one that size
With hindsight, the old tag thread was flawed pretty much from the start. The biggest issue was the recommended misting times of 20-30 sec. The pressure swings during the misting pulse didn`t do much for uniform droplet sizes.
The thread lost the plot completely when they decided accumulators were an unnecessary complication

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im sorry buddy if your eyes are that bad.

yea your right abou it being flawed and i think it contributes to the negative attitudes towards HP aero to this day. if you ever ask a question about HP aero on any forum they always link you to that thread. thats sad since its so full of garbage and errors. his recommendations about feeding and misting times are wrong. someone once told me if your feeding heavy in HP aero or running long misting times then your just doing LP aero.. Im finding out thats the razors edge between LP and HP and thats where the results from HP show there potential.

cycling pumps will never get you the same results as an accumulator because of the ramping up and down of the cyles. now Mad Hatter has an interesting approach that might work with firing the solenoids from a continuous running pump but i still think that in the end its so much easier on the system with the accumulator. and what really has me thinking is if a plant does well with 2 sec every 4 minutes whats the sense in 20-30 sec cycles of misting. i guess we just miss what aeroponics is. bios web says plants spend 98 percent of there time in air. well if you figure that out it ends up being 2-3 seconds of mist every3-4 minutes. not 20-30 sec every 3-5 minutes.

Wow, 50 degrees plus water. My water is that warm at the tap for less than one minute. Water temps here are 34 degrees max 36 degree 12 months a year. The water here is actually circulated in the mains and between the houses and the mains. Ie they spend their money circulating the water rather tna pumping at k high pressures. Buildings with sprinkler systems have to install hue holding tanks to and pumps to amke up for low awter main prseeures. The fire departments have tanker trucks and pumper trucks as fire hoses fed from the water amins jsut does make it. We use Pitorifices that protrude into the water main that sorta scoop water out of the main line and circulate it in a loop through the house entry service at all times. Of couse that eats pressure. Then any water actually removed lowers prsessure. There is always a circulation in the system and all pipe is buried a minimum of 4 feet deep and is covered with a minmum of 2 inches of urethane foam insulation. They have emergency generators to assure water circulation during power outages. We have no water towers as they would freeze solid about 5 months per year. We have basically a giant swimmng pool under the water treatment plant for water storage. It is a bit different living in a cold climate. Water ram pumps have been around for over a century. They use to use huge ones up here to supply water for gold mining as the alternative then was wood boiler driven pumps where they would have still had to build the water lines. So instead they would just build lines that were larger at the begining then at the end. They sacrificed some water at each drop in order to power the waters pumped rise over each hill. They built water lines that traveled for miles. And that was the during days of riveted pipe sections. Now most people up here outside of cities and towns with water tratement palnts have water storage tanks inside their homes and either have water delivered or haul it in large plastic water tanks. Most sha;llow wells up here have extremely bad water with exr treme amounts of irin and manganese. Most of the the deep wells have exremely hard water with arsenic and iron.

Circulation is much better than frozen or burst pipes, it makes sense to ditch pressure in favour of keeping the water moving.It doesn`t get too cold here with winter lows of -6C to -8C

The cloner was just another experiment as i had the bits laying around. It takes roughly an hour for the water to heat from 50F to 68F and around 1hr 45 mins for the water to travel through the full length of the exchanger coil. Its longer than it needed to be to make sure the water hit the temperature well before it got to the solenoid.

tree farmer said:

im sorry buddy if your eyes are that bad.

[...]

now Mad Hatter has an interesting approach that might work with firing the solenoids from a continuous running pump but i still think that in the end its so much easier on the system with the accumulator.

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I'm pretty curious to see how that will work myself

I've got some nice keyence digital pressure gauges which should let me monitor differental pressure between the head end and the end of each spray bar... Ultimately I'll be feeding them into the grow controller... But it's coming down to the wire so the Hal 420 version will have to wait for a bit

A constantly running mist would be ideal if you put the plants on a turnatable/ lazy susan type unit with a variable rotation speed.
With a large enough unit you could have misting pulses of a fraction of a second to individual root zones at high pressure without any solenoids, tanks or timers. The pump and rotation device ultimately become the weak links so theres still no free lunch
Another option is to use something along the lines of a light mover to move a single misting nozzle linearly along a rectangular root chamber. You can buy high pressure rotatable joints which would allow 360deg rotation of a misting boom arm. Theres no shortage of possibilities to explore

Atomizer said:

A constantly running mist would be ideal if you put the plants on a turnatable/ lazy susan type unit with a variable rotation speed.
With a large enough unit you could have misting pulses of a fraction of a second to individual root zones at high pressure without any solenoids, tanks or timers. The pump and rotation device ultimately become the weak links so theres still no free lunch
Another option is to use something along the lines of a light mover to move a single misting nozzle linearly along a rectangular root chamber. You can buy high pressure rotatable joints which would allow 360deg rotation of a misting boom arm. Theres no shortage of possibilities to explore

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i have to hand it to ya. you have ideas ive never even thought about. and i thought i over analyised stuff. a moving nozzel along a long run now that would be cool.

fatman7574 said:

Wow, 50 degrees plus water. My water is that warm at the tap for less than one minute. Water temps here are 34 degrees max 36 degree 12 months a year. The water here is actually circulated in the mains and between the houses and the mains. Ie they spend their money circulating the water rather tna pumping at k high pressures. Buildings with sprinkler systems have to install hue holding tanks to and pumps to amke up for low awter main prseeures. The fire departments have tanker trucks and pumper trucks as fire hoses fed from the water amins jsut does make it. We use Pitorifices that protrude into the water main that sorta scoop water out of the main line and circulate it in a loop through the house entry service at all times. Of couse that eats pressure. Then any water actually removed lowers prsessure. There is always a circulation in the system and all pipe is buried a minimum of 4 feet deep and is covered with a minmum of 2 inches of urethane foam insulation. They have emergency generators to assure water circulation during power outages. We have no water towers as they would freeze solid about 5 months per year. We have basically a giant swimmng pool under the water treatment plant for water storage. It is a bit different living in a cold climate. Water ram pumps have been around for over a century. They use to use huge ones up here to supply water for gold mining as the alternative then was wood boiler driven pumps where they would have still had to build the water lines. So instead they would just build lines that were larger at the begining then at the end. They sacrificed some water at each drop in order to power the waters pumped rise over each hill. They built water lines that traveled for miles. And that was the during days of riveted pipe sections. Now most people up here outside of cities and towns with water tratement palnts have water storage tanks inside their homes and either have water delivered or haul it in large plastic water tanks. Most sha;llow wells up here have extremely bad water with exr treme amounts of irin and manganese. Most of the the deep wells have exremely hard water with arsenic and iron.

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hey fatman what do most people heat with where your at. i go thru propane like a sailer does whiskey. need alternative.

I was thinking of making the nozzle bars rotate... At least when the design still called for them to go down the center of the containers... Would be pretty simple to do with a big RC servo or something...

Now moving a single nozzle would be something else... Though still very doable. I have a pair of 2' linear actuators that will ultimately operate the inner door to my room... Something like that might work well... But given the environment you would have to bag them up like they do with camera gear when filming splatter pics Or better still locate the drive electronics outside the chamber.

Now if you powered the whole deal pneumatically or hydraulically that would be something else... STC, the same people that I get the solenoids from look to have a very nice range of pneumatic and hydraulic actuators and control systems... You can even get stuff like joysticks that operate several axies worth of valves... It all just looks like tons of fun to me

A set of centrally mounted rotating heads would also be pretty cool... You would get the swirling pattern out of the misting system that way... Much harder the source the parts though...

I bet rotating a large circular chamber back and forth 180 one way and then back the other would give you some strong ass stems... And it would look cool

I like it... Keep kicking those ideas out Atom.

T.M.H.

tree farmer said:

hey fatman what do most people heat with where your at. i go thru propane like a sailer does whiskey. need alternative.

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Fuel oil, wood and coal in that order. Fuel oil is the standard. There are a few people in the core arae of the city that have steam heat from the power plant but mainly only the old businesses are connected. Everthing else, new housing areas, shopping centers etc are out side the city core so they use fuel oil. We keep hoping for a natural gas pipeline. There is a gas distribution line in the city area but it uses gas that is trucked in from across the state. It is about the same cost as fuel oil as it is not as cheap as natural gas would be. A Our oil and gasoline costs are about if not the most exspensive in the country. Gasoline is presently $367 per gallon for self service regular.

We build with lots of insulation, double or triple pane windows and our houses are typically smaller then nation averages. Electricity is presently $0.26 per kWh. We have electric heaters on our car batteries, oil pans, and engine blocks so they will start in the winter. Only upper middle income or higher have heated garages. Average home size up here is barely 1000 square feet. In the village areas away from the cities the houses are much smaller, about 200 to 400 square feet. Takes a lot of heat when temps can drop easily to minus 50 deg F for several weeks every winter. It is warmer than usual out side right now at minus 17 F degrees. It should be at least 10 to 15 degrees colder.

you guys all know im new to this aero world, but if im not mistaken, i might be able to combine your ideas and help you out...

these celenoids or whatever they are, are they at each sprayer? or are they at each end of a pipe? either way.... it seems as tho these are like fuel injectors on a car... because you guys mention duty cycles, etc...

if you wanted to have a pump running continuously... but it did not favor the roots to be under continuous spray,

what one might be able to do is run a single large pump, have it on continuously, and then have the main line split to 2 or more lines, and each of those lines feed different plants, OR each line could run down each side of each row of plants...

either way...

one could make the duty cycles alternate between lines for about a minute or some other amount of time.

this way, the pump is always on and fluid always flowing...

the only question is, which sprayers is it coming out of?

an example would be if there were 4 lines that all joined into one main line attached to the pump.

then each of the 4 lines celenoids or sprayers turns on for 1 min, while the other 3 lines remain off, and they alternate, making each line of sprayers come on once every 4 minutes... while the pump runs constantly.

Hopefully this helps, and im not completely missing the boat...

but im probably missing the boat somewhere.. and i just wasted 2 minutes of everyones life


edit: or if you only have one line, but put a celenoid at each sprayer site, and just have the sprayers alternate on and offs, for each particular plant, or group of.

Hi Sherriberry
Theres usually only one solenoid between the accumulator tank and the nozzles with a short pipe run. One at every nozzle would be nice with a long pipe run as it keeps the line at accumulator pressure so you dont repressurize much pipework during each misting pulse. You`ll have 90psi ready to go right at the nozzle
A 1min on cycle will soak everything, an ideal timer for hp would have 1-5 seconds on (1 second steps) for the misting pulse and 1-5 minutes off (15 or 30 second steps) for the pause.

TMH
Stepper motors would be the best bet for motivated nozzles. A toothed belt could carry the nozzle back and forth and a simple programable controller would position the nozzle at the exact spot everytime, very similar to how a printer controls the print head.

TMH
Stepper motors would be the best bet for motivated nozzles. A toothed belt could carry the nozzle back and forth and a simple programable controller would position the nozzle at the exact spot everytime, very similar to how a printer controls the print head.

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That would be one hell of a long belt man I'm not saying that it wouldn't work, but I think you might be better off with a cable drive or one of those [FONT=&quot]helical [/FONT]drive chains... You would need tensioners of some sort as well... I made an electric skateboard for burning man a few years back... I figured since the drive chain was less then a foot long I could get away without much of a tensioning mechanism... I was wrong.

The photos show what I ended up doing with the adjustable linkage... Of course that motor is capable of something like 4.8HP and more torque then my Honda... *

I do like the belt drive idea though... Compact and efficient... You could even use something simple like an encoder disk with a photo-sensor to mark the positions of the plants... I have a feeling though that you would be just fine running it end to end on an continuous basis... Your not watering after all, just filling the chamber.

Then again this would all really only apply to something that was just huge... Cuz' even my little nozzle array put out such a dense mist in a few seconds that running it for short enough time periods becomes the challenge rather then the reverse.

Speaking of which... I was thinking about what TF said RE the loss of pressure between switching periods... And I realized that I had to some degree already incorporated a solution. The timing controller currently has a 10 second pause between when the pump restarts and the first bank opens. Since the pump is not self priming I wanted a period to allow for proper pressure run-up... This could be expanded if I end up haveing to shut the pump off for long periods between misting cycles... Though what I will probably do is just just add an additional solenoid inline with the main manifold that will go open when no other banks are running... If I keep this as the end of the other manifold i.e. after all the other solenoids it should ensure that the lines are pretty near full pressure when they go open.

On the same note, McMaster offers some rather expensive nozzles very similar to mine that are marketed as "anti-drip" that have a pressure valve inline with the nozzle... I think they close as something like 70PSI... This would also have the effect of keeping the rail pressure constant... However they are well more then double the price.

T.M.H.



















*Yeah, I admit it... I just wanted to post those photos

Its a good idea to use adv`s if you can as they make the misting response very sharp. If you have very short pipe runs you may get away without them but you`ll get a short delay at the start of a pulse and some run-on at the end as the pipework depressurizes through the nozzle.
The perfect passive adv would open at your minimum system running pressure (75psi for TF and 65psi for me) and close at a max of 5psi less. I couldn`t find anything that tight, mine open at 58 and close at 26.
The only other alternative is to use a solenoid for nozzle so there`s zero pipelength to pressurize and no water to feed any mist run-on but that could get expensive.
Perhaps a normally open solenoid could reroute your flow from the pump directly to the res during an extended pause cycle? Add adv`s to the nozzles to maintain some pressure in the misting circuit.

Atomizer said:

Its a good idea to use adv`s if you can as they make the misting response very sharp. If you have very short pipe runs you may get away without them but you`ll get a short delay at the start of a pulse and some run-on at the end as the pipework depressurizes through the nozzle.
The perfect passive adv would open at your minimum system running pressure (75psi for TF and 65psi for me) and close at a max of 5psi less. I couldn`t find anything that tight, mine open at 58 and close at 26.
The only other alternative is to use a solenoid for nozzle so there`s zero pipelength to pressurize and no water to feed any mist run-on but that could get expensive.
Perhaps a normally open solenoid could reroute your flow from the pump directly to the res during an extended pause cycle? Add adv`s to the nozzles to maintain some pressure in the misting circuit.

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The pipe run is around 8' long... I was kind of thinking of feeding from both ends... Obviously there is still likely to be some trapped air... But I have a feeling this would considerably minimize it... And I have SO much excess capacity on the manifolds right now... Hell... I guess the best way to find out is just to try it eh?

I'll let you guys know... Otherwise just plumbing a 90 with some larger pipe going straight up would probably do the trick... Same thing you use to reduce "pipe-hammers" in a house.... Unless I'm missing the point here...

T.M.H.

The Mad Hatter said:

The pipe run is around 8' long... I was kind of thinking of feeding from both ends... Obviously there is still likely to be some trapped air... But I have a feeling this would considerably minimize it... And I have SO much excess capacity on the manifolds right now... Hell... I guess the best way to find out is just to try it eh?

I'll let you guys know... Otherwise just plumbing a 90 with some larger pipe going straight up would probably do the trick... Same thing you use to reduce "pipe-hammers" in a house.... Unless I'm missing the point here...

T.M.H.

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that is a crazy looking skateboard. looking at those pics and now i understand your quote

" My crazy runs wide, and it runs deep"
*****************************

The best bet is to keep the pipework completely flooded all the time if you can.
A water hammer arrestor will probably increase the mist overrun, the air compressed in the arrestor tube by the water pressure will drive the nozzles after the solenoid closes.

tree farmer said:

that is a crazy looking skateboard. looking at those pics and now i understand your quote

" My crazy runs wide, and it runs deep"
*****************************

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Not crazy enough for that one... Calculated top speed of about 38Mph... I took it up to about 25... Speed wobble starts to get the better of me around there... Turns much better in reverse too


T.M.H.

You`re a far braver man than me, it doesn`t look like theres any brakes either

Atomizer said:

You`re a far braver man than me, it doesn`t look like theres any brakes either

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Yeah... I had always meant to add a go-kart disk break... But the controller has regenerative breaking and ends up being able to stop the thing just fine... I can go down a 15 degree slope at any speed I want from fractions of a MPH on up...

Sadly the turning radius is what ended up making it unsafe for burning man... It's go something like a 30' circle... Perhaps more... I can barely turn it around on a 2 lane street.

Burned up about $600 worth of LiPo cells by leaving them plugged into the controller over night too... So it's kind of been retired until batter prices come down a bit.

T.M.H.

And they say hp aero is an expensive hobby
I`ve been brainstorming again, a root chamber design this time. Its dirt cheap and allows you to increase the chamber depth to match the roots as they grow, the only limitation is the height of the room.