odam2k
Well-Known Member
Hi there, I'm about a month into my project, and decided it's time to not only share it, but document it as well. Hopefully posting here will accomplish both 
I will keep this first post short, and come back often updating the thread, which should be quite often as I have nothing much else to do while waiting for my plants to grow
So, I guess I better describe what I'm doing... and why....
First, why?
About 7 years ago when I was still working, and playing with R/C toys, I ended up buying some arduino stuff to fiddle with. (google it if you don't know what an arduino is) but never had a chance to play with it... Fast forward to today, I'm on disability, and have TONS of free time. Initially I was on a lot of opioids, and used medical pot to get off those, and some other nasty pharma's... Affording al that pot was a problem, so I got my grow license, and have a small grow set up in a spare bedroom. I set up my workspace in there as well, and started playing with the arduinos again, and discovered just how much I could do with them!
Now, what am I doing?
First, some info about my layout...
I am licensed for 40 plants, so I've set up three "locations", one for my clones, one for veg, and one for flowering...
My clone area is just my DWC machine on a shelf in the kitchen under an LED bulb... The DWC holds 24 clones when full... 6 rows of 4 spots
My Veg area is about 3' by 3', it's two plastic shelving units taped together so its 2 deep, making the shelf area square... The bottom 2 shelves are for storage, and the top, open to the ceiling level, is where the plants are. The very top shelf is the roof, and hanging from that is a LED light fixture (like used on the patio or over a door outside). The whole thing is wrapped in plastic, the black/white stuff... This area holds 9 plants, 3 rows of 3 pots, my pots are 10" across, roughly square...
My flower area is about 3' x 7', with white plastic along the back and side walls (back wall is 7'), so 21 pots altogether, 3 deep, 7 across...
Each area, I call a "location" (1-Veg, 2-Flower, 3-Clones)
Each spot a pot or plant goes, I call a "plot" (a plot belongs to a location)
I have made my own soil moisture sensors using galvanized nails, wire, and a 10k resistor as a voltage divider...
Each "sensor" is numbered... and labeled
There are also temperature sensors, humidity sensors, and more to come...
So a plot can hold a plant, but it can also hold a sensor...
My database (MySql hold all this info) has a bunch of tables such as a "location" table, "plot" table, "plant" table, "sensor" table...
It also has lookup tables for "strains", "vendors", "sensor_type", etc...
and Map tables that tie Plants to a Plot, and Sensors to a Plot...
More on db structure later if there's any interest...
So all my plants have moisture sensors, each location has temperature sensors, including one in the air conditioner in the spare room which cools everything, so I can track when it's on...
ALL sensor reading obviously are logged to the database...
How is this accomplished?
I have an Arduino Mega with an on board ESP8266 WiFi module. This is my main "Server", the arduino part handles communication with the other "modules" to gather data, and sends it to the ESP8266 which then does all the MySQL db stuff... The ESP8266 also runs a web server.
Each "module" is an arduino pro/mini with 8 analog inputs, each with a sensor attached. There are 4 modules so far:
Module00 is the main module in the grow room, it communicates with Module01 and Module02 via serial interface, passing XML back and forth... Every "x" minutes, it sends a "ping" to each module and requests it to read it's sensors, and send the data... In order that the moisture sensors don't corrode from being on all the time, Module00 uses a relay to power ALL the sensors attached at once, sends the request, gathers the data, then turns off the power till next time. This allows it to gather data from 8x3 sensors, or 24 sensors in all at one shot. I need to add one more module to cover all my spots...
Module03 is special, it is in the clone area, and currently has two temperature sensors, one in the air, and one in the water. Every x minutes, it reads the sensors, and then sends that info to Module00 using a bluetooth connection.
Probably sounds confusing, but hopefully that will get cleared up as I go forward... Maybe a pretty picture will help
I will keep this first post short, and come back often updating the thread, which should be quite often as I have nothing much else to do while waiting for my plants to grow
So, I guess I better describe what I'm doing... and why....
First, why?
About 7 years ago when I was still working, and playing with R/C toys, I ended up buying some arduino stuff to fiddle with. (google it if you don't know what an arduino is) but never had a chance to play with it... Fast forward to today, I'm on disability, and have TONS of free time. Initially I was on a lot of opioids, and used medical pot to get off those, and some other nasty pharma's... Affording al that pot was a problem, so I got my grow license, and have a small grow set up in a spare bedroom. I set up my workspace in there as well, and started playing with the arduinos again, and discovered just how much I could do with them!
Now, what am I doing?
First, some info about my layout...
I am licensed for 40 plants, so I've set up three "locations", one for my clones, one for veg, and one for flowering...
My clone area is just my DWC machine on a shelf in the kitchen under an LED bulb... The DWC holds 24 clones when full... 6 rows of 4 spots
My Veg area is about 3' by 3', it's two plastic shelving units taped together so its 2 deep, making the shelf area square... The bottom 2 shelves are for storage, and the top, open to the ceiling level, is where the plants are. The very top shelf is the roof, and hanging from that is a LED light fixture (like used on the patio or over a door outside). The whole thing is wrapped in plastic, the black/white stuff... This area holds 9 plants, 3 rows of 3 pots, my pots are 10" across, roughly square...
My flower area is about 3' x 7', with white plastic along the back and side walls (back wall is 7'), so 21 pots altogether, 3 deep, 7 across...
Each area, I call a "location" (1-Veg, 2-Flower, 3-Clones)
Each spot a pot or plant goes, I call a "plot" (a plot belongs to a location)
I have made my own soil moisture sensors using galvanized nails, wire, and a 10k resistor as a voltage divider...
Each "sensor" is numbered... and labeled
There are also temperature sensors, humidity sensors, and more to come...
So a plot can hold a plant, but it can also hold a sensor...
My database (MySql hold all this info) has a bunch of tables such as a "location" table, "plot" table, "plant" table, "sensor" table...
It also has lookup tables for "strains", "vendors", "sensor_type", etc...
and Map tables that tie Plants to a Plot, and Sensors to a Plot...
More on db structure later if there's any interest...
So all my plants have moisture sensors, each location has temperature sensors, including one in the air conditioner in the spare room which cools everything, so I can track when it's on...
ALL sensor reading obviously are logged to the database...
How is this accomplished?
I have an Arduino Mega with an on board ESP8266 WiFi module. This is my main "Server", the arduino part handles communication with the other "modules" to gather data, and sends it to the ESP8266 which then does all the MySQL db stuff... The ESP8266 also runs a web server.
Each "module" is an arduino pro/mini with 8 analog inputs, each with a sensor attached. There are 4 modules so far:
Module00 is the main module in the grow room, it communicates with Module01 and Module02 via serial interface, passing XML back and forth... Every "x" minutes, it sends a "ping" to each module and requests it to read it's sensors, and send the data... In order that the moisture sensors don't corrode from being on all the time, Module00 uses a relay to power ALL the sensors attached at once, sends the request, gathers the data, then turns off the power till next time. This allows it to gather data from 8x3 sensors, or 24 sensors in all at one shot. I need to add one more module to cover all my spots...
Module03 is special, it is in the clone area, and currently has two temperature sensors, one in the air, and one in the water. Every x minutes, it reads the sensors, and then sends that info to Module00 using a bluetooth connection.
Probably sounds confusing, but hopefully that will get cleared up as I go forward... Maybe a pretty picture will help
