home-automated, low cost setups: PRESENTATION & DISCUSSIONS

Discussion in 'Do It Yourself' started by olMan, Jan 10, 2022.

  1. hello community

    I would like to introduce you to my 2x4 tent setup, because it differs in one or the other aspect from the normal equipment. that's DIY here right?
    and I would be happy about a lively discussion and am curious about your thoughts and optimization suggestions.

    the initial situation:
    - I grow in the rooftop room
    - high temperature in winter even warmer in summer
    - very low humidity < 30% RH

    as tent i have chosen the spider-farmer 2x4+, 140x70x200 cm
    together with a SF-2000 led panel i got an offer for under 400$, i had to buy it. the quality of the poles, the fabric the whole construction, zipper, the double ducted fan inlets ... all really well thought out and of high quality. the led panel is also top and well known.

    ok so i had the tent and light. now it was about temperature, air exchange, air movement, humidity and controlling all this to give the girls the best habit and environment at any point of their life cycle.
    and there is now a lot of choice and a lot of options.
    and best of all, the whole thing should be easy to control, who wants to fiddle with a mechanical timer with a toothpick and push pins up and down when changing the light cycle.

    and this is where home automation comes into play.
    it would be great if you were on the road, could take a quick look into the tent via a stream, adjust the temperature up or down a bit, or just take a look at the monitoring to see if all the values are in the green zone.

    ok, so let's start with the light.
    there are mechanical or digital timers, costing around 5-20$ a wifi relay with external thermometer and RH module costs 16$.
    so the price-performance ratio is clear, isn't it?
    with this one wifi switch i can turn the light on and off, have temperature and RH in view and in addition also rules with which i can set the light cycle down to the second, as theoretically toggle every second all day long, useless of course but mechanical and digital timers can mostly only 30 to max 5 min. and certainly not something like: daytime ON, at night only 5 min. ON all 20 min. which brings us to circuits for the canopy fan, because it also needs a timer. and at the latest from now on it gets complicated, because these are only 2 timers and they should be linked to each other via rules, for example 1x define the day-night cycle and then all devices react with a day setting or the night setting and switch them automatically.

    automatically says it already ... home automation!
    I was at 400$ for tent and light and needed now the rest of stuff to start growing
    and this is where I want to present you my home-automated DIY solution in the next posts step by step.

    low cost, small effort, maximum control from everywhere including cameras for live streams and may power bill will stay low as well. for the tech minded, when I run everything at 100% I have 1.23 A/h consumption ... pretty nice, hey ?!

    so stay tuned for more to come or start posting your DIY setups thoughts or questions.
     
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  2. kk, after a lot of text ... time for pics

    sorry for the bad quality, got only my smartphone atm.
    the room looks like a mess, but inside the tent you can eat from the ground LOL
    the whole wireing and tubeing looks weirdo as well, will explain every single device in detail later on
    the pics from inside the tent are from the 2 esp-cams ... didn't want to open the tent, will make pics when I open the tent anyway for watering
    and the last is my controlpanel with the dashboard that shows, on top you see more tabs with sensor views and cams
    all in detail explained in the next posts ... enough some pics now
     
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  3. IMG_4295.JPG IMG_4308.JPG IMG_4296.JPG IMG_4297.JPG IMG_4298.JPG IMG_4299.JPG capture.jpg capture-1.jpg Bildschirmfoto 2022-01-10 um 19.04.49.png
     
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  4. and if you wonder what and how old thee gals are they are all autos from seeds66.com
    germed 8 and got these 5 running

    upload_2022-1-10_19-19-47.png
     
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  5. Looks good. What kind of sensor system are you using? Some kind of arduino?
     
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  6. #6 olMan, Jan 10, 2022
    Last edited: Jan 10, 2022
    hey goblin, welcome and happy to see somebody is reading AND posting ;)
    yep indeed it is arduino based r let's say capable of arduino platform
    the esp cams I use are completely arduino based code and I just integrate the stream and still image in the home automation
    all the other switches devices sensors are esp32/8266 based and flashed with a FW called tasmota, will go in depth later on that
    just google tasmota and you will find out easily
    the iobroker I use is calles 'HomeAssistant' and both tasmota and HASS are free open source well documented and supported by e.g. discord chats
    I will as written go in detail on every device and programming I did

    the one thing I want to state here forehand ... nobody shall quit at this stage because of missing programming or technical skills
    despite that I am rc-pilot and know little about voltage and amps and how to solder wires all the rest is now big deal for the average PC user, maybe with a little help from friends when setting up the computer to run the whole thingy
    but than again, no big deal, all this can run on a simple rapberry PI for a few bucks and there is a completely ready image to install via SD card and the whole computer stuff is done at 99%

    so may all stay tuned that eventually are not so electrotechnically minded, no witchcraft here
     
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  7. oh and as I did not 100% awnser your question
    the only 2 sensors I use are temp and RH and the device is a sonoff TH16
    https://sonoff.tech/product/diy-smart-switch/th10-th16/ again with tasmota FW flashed
     
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  8. S.b.?

    Yes I have seen different approaches and videos on the subject. Someone standardized it and shared code so it seemed very easy and straightforward

    But I havent tried it myself yet
     
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  9. Nice. I looked into this Arduino platform a year or so ago wanting to build a PH/Ec/temp monitor. Got intimated by the code writing/programming process. It is something I would like to revisit though. Nice work.
     
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  10. thy paulie and nice ya fond the time to pop in
    it looks weirdo right now with all these open cables and boards, thats mainly because I am still experimenting

    eg this on top of the pic
    [​IMG]

    this is a prototype o a controller stearing a stepper motor with 2 gear wheels and a ration of 4:1
    so 1 tuen of the motor axis makes 1/4 turn of the big blue wheel turning the shutterdisk in the tube from closed to 90° = fully open, so I can open the shutter in 100 steps of 0.9°
    all that is now with a dev-board (the blue one) and a prototyping PCB with the stepper driver and q quick and dirty mount for the motor on the tube
    all this, motor and the blue and green board will fit in a box little smaller than a pack of cigarettes
    with a different smaller esp board and all soldered propperly to small PCBs and installed in a 3D printed box

    I am always on a 3 step development
    - transform the idea with cheap devices and breabords on the table
    - prototype soldering the components on PCB
    when all workz and is tested in the field, minimize size and put in a compartment with sockets for wiring

    stay tuned, as mentioned all will be explained in detail and I hope for input to optimize
     
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  11. sorry corrected above
    s.b. = somebody, I am no english native, bare with me please
     
  12. all this is no wichcraft as said
    essentially you need no codeing knowlwedge at all as mainly avarthingy is already existing
    all ya need is to find the code for your project, maximum alter some variable values and flash it to the device
    so keep on following and if ya need sth in detail to know about arduino and compatible platforms like e.g. platformio etc, do not hesitate to ask.

    I chose the tasmota way for home automation mainly for 2 reasons
    a) no need to code as all devices flashed with tasmota FW are mainly ready to be integrated into HomeAssistant software (the dashboard image I posted earlier) and all the magic then is done in HASS (HomeASSistant)
    b) I didnt want a cloud solution posting my data to some chinese cloud server, for privacy as well as for ecological reasons, no need for the chinese to know about my growtent, no need to create network traffic and heat the world with my data travelling to china ;)

    my solution workz completely free from the internet just in my home network
    and if I want to peak in from outside I use VPN and login secure from outside with my smartphone or laptop to my home network
    keeps my data private and my CO2 footprint smaller
     
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  13. a little preview of what is to come

    upload_2022-1-10_21-10-49.png

    check the temp and RH
    temp +/- 1.5° around 26.3°C
    humidity +/- 1% around 42% RH

    so what you might say now, normal ... yep ... BUUUUUT
    all this is hardware wise regulated by a single 120mm 12V PC fan and the 2 12V esp based tube shutters
    so you can imagine what effect that has to the powerbill ... and again to my personal CO2 footprint
     
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  14. step by step in detail I wrote a few times and even though I already mentioned the tent and led I use I would like to drop a few lines why I chose spider-farmer products, and how I came to that decision

    I had grown 25 years ago one grow on the balcony and then stopped for many uninteresitng reasons
    I wanted to restart and a friend pointed me to autos, not the best idea after the xperience I made
    so I had the thought in my mind ... hey it is god given, nature and maybe older than homo-sapiens ... 4 buckets on the balcony soil seeds water maybe some nutes and the big powerplant in the universe will lead to some nice weed
    I have documented the whole journey in a journal, check it out if ya have fun reading an old mans way to growing
    Outdoor Automatic late 2021 - Discussion & Help appreciated

    the bad, cold and wet summer thought me that there is more to grow decent weed so serve my personal use
    especially peops like @Dr M helped out massively to get me where I am, thx doc
    or in figures, with doc's initial ush into the right directions for essentials and the help of many of you folks here on GC I planted the first seed 15th june 2021 and have harvested since then about good 12 oz from 6 plants

    so I soon found out that the basic is control over temp and RH, no way outside, not even in my small balcony greenhouse
    thats when I went indoors and continued the outdoor grow inside in our guest toilet, the famous pooper-cab LOL
    and if it was slightly bigger ot had no sink and toilet bowl I would be still growing in there
    but for 2 big plants with sink and toilet it was becoming tight and handling was a mess, always get one pod out completely to reach the second one for e.g. watering, otherwise it was perfect

    soon I needed lights and at that time I was hanging around in @Papa Puff's thread and he and slinky had nice experience with spider farmer LEDs, an online-coupon-offer brought a small SF-1000 for less than 100 bucks to my door quite soon ;)

    so now it was time to move from the pooper-cab to a real tent and more light and again there was this offer
    tent and light for 400$ and oops very soon the doorbell rang and the postman brought 2 new packages ;)

    there is not much to say about the tent and light, all the technical specs are well documented on the SF website there was not much to modify, but let me point out a few pros and cons

    the tent: Hydroponic Grow Tent Kits | Grow Tent for Indoor plants | Spider Farmer

    pro:
    - the cloth oxford 1680 D is the thickest in growtent cloth in the market
    - the inside reflection material I had googled independend revies on YT with par measuring seems to be very good
    - frame all in metal even the corner joints, no tools need for assembly
    - well thought in and outtakes enough and positioned perfect
    - heavy duty zipper, which I scrubed/waxed with a candle a few times to make it run very smooth and hence last a long time hopefully
    - the little extra few inches compared to a regular 4x6 make a huge different IMHO
    - price

    con:
    well hard to find but maybe I could mention the straps that shall keep the frontdoor open when unzipping the complete front and folding the cloth around the tent ... just 2 straps ... wtf? and now? make a not in it? I decided to attach a little metal closing mechanism and cut off the strap on the door to postion it newly and sewing it in right place was a question of 3 mins
    and maybe the chinese workers could have beter cliped of some yarn when sewing the tent

    otherwise I am super happy with the tent and it is really well thuoght design with best quality materials for decent price IMHO
    it is completley light stealth and when the velcros for the air exchachnage a closed propperly it is really sealed as my small 120mm pc fan can create within seconds a visible underpressure in the tent.

    which makes me think of another con
    there where no matching frame addons to create a horizontal frame at half height to prevent the tent cloth beeing sucked into the tent and decreasing the space, SF doesn't offer anything, products from other manufacturers didn't fit, or when they cam at least near to be installed with some minor modifications to fit, they where so expensive that compared to the tents price I was not willing to pay that
    so I had to build that mid-height-frame myself and got it for less than 10 bucks in the local DIY homebuilder market.
    detailed pictures when I open the tent tomorrow

    and as for the lights ...
    LED Grow Light | Indoor LED Grow Light | Spider Farmer
    nothing much to say

    I can chain it with the SF-1000 I do have so the complete tentsize right into the corners could be max lightened, and I already investigated how to automate the dimming function as well, no big deal with an esp-relais, but I have concentrated on other things by now as I do not see the immediate need. I switch it automated by the powersupply and dimming ... well I dimm it manually when raising the lights to match canopy.
     
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  15. well i'm predicting in 2022 you'll do hydro..wit all the gear you got and your luv of tech..think you'll also move on to fem and reg seed..many more options on what can be done..autos are limited..i thinnk you max'd out that area and time for nu challennges..
     
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  16. my challenge is to grw more bud wit less plnts and cheaply..using basically just sunlite..i'm gettin there wit sustainable pwr bill..$55 in winter is damm gd! i'm going to do less soil for pot and grw vegtables instead..i do 4-5 screens of pot yeild 2-3lbs per run i'm golden..i'm 71 now so cuttin bk on hrd labor DSCN3601.JPG DSCN3602.JPG DSCN3599.JPG DSCN3600.JPG
     
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  17. hey doc you are damn right as ya have been always up to now with your predictions
    hydro in 2022 not sure yet, but no more autos on next grow ... that is fix already
    fem photos or whatever you call feminized seeds, that will be my next challenge mid end of march begin of april I think as the HKs will take longer round 100-110 days I think
     
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  18. Here is my thought after setting up a rigorous bridged network with Samsung Smart Things. Spend years setting up this shit and writing scripted switches to trigger functions and the fuckers just go and change their application’s platform and all that work is lost. The devices still function, but all programming is lost. Same with my iPad that apple no longer supports and many apps no longer compatible. Consumer IOT technology has no longevity (as in platform stability) and limited operability over time due to “upgrades” that sacrifice all your programming work to the internet Gods.

    Just my experience, hope that doesn’t happen with you, I love your setup!

    Did you figure out how to control your lights with the CAT cable? I left you a reply.
     
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