Yes, we need to monitor our girls to assure ourselves the status of their wellbeing. Temperature control in an indoor setting is important and ranks in importance with water & light. As a retired engineer and tinkerer I resurrected a 1980 Timex 2000 computer and an old data acquisition module, built some sensors and came up with this lash-up. I wrote a little program for it in BASIC and now have it running on a shelf in the corner of the radio station/computer room to keep track of the girls. One photo shows the little TIMEX computer set up. The other photo shows the screen where the collected information is displayed.
For those who are interested, here is a GEEK explanation:
The program as it stands on this revision, controls the temperature in the dry tent keeping the temperature stable. As of this instant the dry tent is not activated or the temperature would read higher. The program is telling me the heater should be on because the tent is too cold. The heater is unplugged because nothing is drying at this time. Other than that, you can see on the screen I am monitoring various temperatures of the environment in and adjacent to the grow area. I had an extra sensor or two and 3 k of memory left so I added a solar activity monitor and a couple internal conditions I wanted to monitor. There are 11 analog measurements and 22 if/then decisions made based on the level of those inputs.
For an 8K program, It's very busy. It cycles through all the measurements every 12 seconds. Someone asked me to explain the solar sensor part of the program and why was it necessary to include it. There is always a critic huh? Here is the explanation:
There are 8 decisions based on the input levels on input number 4. The inputs used by the computer on the data acquisition device is listed on the right side of the screen. Those numbers indicate the port looked at by the computer during the time that particular measurement was taken. The little black curser immediately to the right of those numbers shows the input being measured at that instant and moves down the screen from port to port as the measurements are being made and displayed. I don't need to read temperature to a thousandth of a degree but the computer happily does it for me anyway. I'll dumb it down to read tenth of a degree later. The same for the solar sensor. It is nothing more than a solar cell on the roof of which I am measuring the voltage generated. The maximum voltage I get off that solar cell in the brightest of sun days is 2.98 volts. Any other reason the cell is not putting out full voltage is because something is getting in the way of the sun's rays like, clouds, fog, sun on the other side of the planet, etc. Based on the level of the solar cell's voltage at certain times of the day the computer can display a predetermined automated responses based on those voltage levels. In this case I start at 2.9. If the cell reads that much voltage it must be in the full day sun and there is nothing to obscure the full sun's rays. The display will read U-V ALERT and will continue to say that until the voltage drops below 2.22 volts. At that point the display changes to: BRIGHT DAY continuing until the cell reads: 2.19 meaning: GOOD LIGHT At various states of lower voltage the display reads: 1.11 FAIR LIGHT, .50 USEABLE LIGHT.38 TWILIGHT .20 LOW LIGHT WARNING, .10 TOO DARK TO WORK. Those are the choices the computer gets to make. Each time the measurement starts it begins at the top voltage takes a reading and goes down the list until one of the parameters just listed fits the voltage range and the related message is displayed concurrently.Pretty simple huh? It sounds more impressive to say: My little computer can tell if it is day or night. No it doesn't. All of it is a subjective observation made by myself at various times of the day, like TWILIGHT time saying to myself: It is about the right light level for twilight as I sat on the front porch observing the reducing light level with my light meter? It also begins to get difficult to read the Wall Street Journal. I read the meter and recorded the voltage. The U-V ALERT warning is subjective too. I don't have a U-V sensor. I'm sitting by the pool on a hot bright day thinking: Damn the sun is hot! If there isn't a U-V ALERT declared there should be. Hey Honey, can you bring me another beer? She can't read my mind so I have to get up and get one for myself. As for the necessity of why I did it? I forgot.
