I usually bounce around a lot . I'll drop in once in awhile for sure. Need anything give a holla
Aspen's Alaskan Purple In Soil - 2022
- Thread starter AspenCultivator
- Start date
Gee64
Well-Known Member
Hi Aspen. The babies are looking good. Mind if I watch?
- Thread starter
- #23
AspenCultivator
Well-Known Member
The more eyeballs and brains that check this journal out the better! Thanks for coming in Gee, happy to have you!
- Thread starter
- #24
AspenCultivator
Well-Known Member
Day 7
Hi everyone! Today marks one week since they popped above soil. My tent system has maintained temps at 80* F during the day and 69*F during the night. Humidity floats between 80 and 70 RH as the humidifier is turned on and off. So far everything is looking really good, except maybe #2. See the pics:
Everything these two have received in the last week has been exactly the same, so I know I'm dealing with an odd pheno for #2. The first set of true leaves are spindly and seem weak for now. A reminder, I'm only keeping one of these plants, and after the first week, it's looking like #1 is the favorite right now.
#1 has her second set of nodes coming in and so far spacing is great as far as I can tell, so the light is going to stay at 36" for another few days so I can see more of the second node before I start lowering the light a bit.
Not exactly an exciting update, but growth is growth! Thanks for coming in!
Hi everyone! Today marks one week since they popped above soil. My tent system has maintained temps at 80* F during the day and 69*F during the night. Humidity floats between 80 and 70 RH as the humidifier is turned on and off. So far everything is looking really good, except maybe #2. See the pics:
Everything these two have received in the last week has been exactly the same, so I know I'm dealing with an odd pheno for #2. The first set of true leaves are spindly and seem weak for now. A reminder, I'm only keeping one of these plants, and after the first week, it's looking like #1 is the favorite right now.
#1 has her second set of nodes coming in and so far spacing is great as far as I can tell, so the light is going to stay at 36" for another few days so I can see more of the second node before I start lowering the light a bit.
Not exactly an exciting update, but growth is growth! Thanks for coming in!
lootznbootz
Well-Known Member
Looking good!Day 7
Hi everyone! Today marks one week since they popped above soil. My tent system has maintained temps at 80* F during the day and 69*F during the night. Humidity floats between 80 and 70 RH as the humidifier is turned on and off. So far everything is looking really good, except maybe #2. See the pics:
Everything these two have received in the last week has been exactly the same, so I know I'm dealing with an odd pheno for #2. The first set of true leaves are spindly and seem weak for now. A reminder, I'm only keeping one of these plants, and after the first week, it's looking like #1 is the favorite right now.
#1 has her second set of nodes coming in and so far spacing is great as far as I can tell, so the light is going to stay at 36" for another few days so I can see more of the second node before I start lowering the light a bit.
Not exactly an exciting update, but growth is growth! Thanks for coming in!
Our grows are basically lined up exactly! This is cool to see!
I plan on doing an update later today but it’s not much happening either just steady incremental progress.
But that’s better than the alternative right?
sjb504
Well-Known Member
Cool deal 
- Thread starter
- #27
AspenCultivator
Well-Known Member
I know, I'm stoked to see how these grow on, it'll be really cool to see.
Since not much is going on I wanted to take the opportunity to outline my automated environment setup. I did this in the failed white widow journal, but this journal wouldn't be complete without it as well. So here it is (if you're not interested in the tech of it you can skip this post!):
Grow Tent Systems
I have my own server with a VM running Home Assistant. This 'operating system' is the brain for a whole slew of devices in my home. Temp and humidity sensors, motion sensors, door and window sensors, wireless plugs and switches, TV controls, LED light controls, automated weather station, etc etc. I've had HA for many many years now and decided I'd use it for my grow tent controller as well. You can think of this as any other commercial controller out there, but not as a single contained unit you plug things into. In fact my server is in another room on another floor, no way connecting to the tent with wires.
Great, that's outside the tent. What's inside? I have a total of 3 wireless plugs right now, one for the grow lights, exhaust fan, and humidifier. Within HA is an add-on called NodeRed which allows you to program things using a graphical node based system. It's got a learning curve, but once you get the basics you can unlock the true power of this 'programming language' if you will. As a basic example, with a timer node once it reaches whatever time I specify it'll send out a message at that time to turn the grow lights on or off. Easy, right? More on this later. In addition to the plugs I have 2 temperature and humidity sensors, one that plugs in that I made from scratch and one that is wireless using Zigbee.
Now to the control panel. Here's a pic of the dashboard I've created that holds all of this information as well as buttons I can press. This dashboard is also viewable on an 8" tablet that (will be shortly) mounted on the exterior of the tent. The tablet itself is set to use the forward facing camera to detect motion and turn the screen on or off. So, the screen is off, and I walk up to it before unzipping the tent. The screen comes on automatically and I can interact with my buttons and view the information.
The NodeRed flows update the plant stage counters (bottom row of first column) every day at 12:01 AM. I can manually turn on/off the lights, exhaust, and humidifier. The middle row of those buttons allow me to change the state of the plant, and thus, the environment and light schedule. Plants want different temp and humidity numbers during each phase, so once I leave seedling and go to veg I'll hit that Veg Cycle button and boom, the tent will maintain a different humidity level and change the light schedule (if it were different. Right now seedling and veg cycle are at 18/6.) Once I hit the flower button it'll change the lights to 12/12 and maintain a lower humidity range. Just with one button press either on my computer or on the tablet.
Features
What else can it do? Well, I have a calculation setup so every time the humidifier turns on it makes sure the humidity is rising. It waits 6 minutes, and if the humidity has not increased from when the humidifier was turned on, it'll shut the plug off and send my phone a message saying I need to add water. It also pops a card up on the dashboard. It'll be put into a "needs water" state and will not turn back on until I tell the system I've added more water. I can reset the state from the tablet, my computer, or phone.
Another issue I've run across and can kill the entire grow is what happens if the humidifier is turned on, but the wifi plug becomes unavailable when it's time to turn it off? The wifi plug I was using was a cheap knock-off and kept disconnecting from the server. So, if the humidifier is actively running and it attempts to send an "off" message to the plug, but the plug is unavailable, it messages my phone and stops all activity until I manually intervene. I've since replaced the plug with a Zigbee one from Aqara and so far in the last week have had zero issues.
Okay this is getting too long haha. Lastly, back to those buttons, if I press and hold the Last Water, Last Fert, and Plant Age cards they will reset the numbers. So once I water I'll reset the Last Water by pressing and holding it, and it resets to 0 and start counting up every day. Makes this extremely easy to track days in seedling, veg, flower, watered, not watered, fertilized, etc.
Finally, I wanted to show the NodeRed flows. This will probably make sense to almost nobody, but it shows the logical flow of events controlling the various systems within the tent.
And this pic shows the humidifier section. Even if you zoom into the pic you won't be able to read the nodes...but this gives an idea of how complicated these can be to do exactly what I want it to do.
Phew, ok. That's the last of it. If you made it this far, thanks for taking the time to read about the setup! It took a few weeks of testing and tweaking to get it dialed to where now I just sit back and watch pretty much. It's been very worth it so far!
Holy crap, AC! That's some fancy schmancy grow tech you've got going there. Well done!
Next thing to do is put moisture sensors in your pots and automate the watering.
Next thing to do is put moisture sensors in your pots and automate the watering.
- Thread starter
- #29
AspenCultivator
Well-Known Member
Holy crap, AC! That's some fancy schmancy grow tech you've got going there. Well done!
Next thing to do is put moisture sensors in your pots and automate the watering.
Thanks Az! Let's just hope it all works as it should over time to produce some decent yield.
Funnily enough I've looked into watering already! I have a plan thought out on how I'd do it, but two things are keeping me back: the wife doesn't want a res in the living room (this was originally done so it's easier to take vegetable seedlings outside in the spring). It's bad enough there's a 36x36 tent in the corner, she wouldn't let me do RDWC like I wanted for this grow because there'd be a res. No matter, that's what our office is for at some point. This is just to use up the space in the tent for now. Why have a great environment for lettuce etc and leave that space empty not growing anything?!?
Second thing is, soil moisture sensors right now are pretty awful at the hobby level. I never considered hundred dollar sensors and systems because, well, it's expensive of course. They don't reliably and consistently read moisture levels. A lot of them sense moisture by measuring conductivity between two points, and those two points are generally placed very close together. I've also read having nutes in the soil (ie synth) can vary the readings wildly as well. I suppose you could do the weight of the pot...but that variable will change as the plant gets bigger and there'd be a massive amount of trial/error/maintenance to get a weighted system dialed.
If I could have a res, I could develop a watering schedule that outputs a set amount at a time, with this amount getting bigger as the plant grows. So I'd decide it needs to be watered and hit a button. Perhaps it'd pump a quart and then stop, then another quart, etc. Could have a bucket sensor (similar to those used in digital rain meters) detect runoff and stop the cycle. I really like this idea, however it'll very quickly get complicated because of proper watering technique. You can't really get soil circulating with a single halo, or drip tube, or nozzle, whatever since you need to water the inside and then the outside of the pot at different times.
Have you seen the "carrot" type automated watering system? They use a ceramic carrot that controls an on/off valve. Low tech in that there's no fancy computer stuff involved, but quite clever in its application.
lootznbootz
Well-Known Member
Aspen this is some next level growing here bud!I know, I'm stoked to see how these grow on, it'll be really cool to see.
Since not much is going on I wanted to take the opportunity to outline my automated environment setup. I did this in the failed white widow journal, but this journal wouldn't be complete without it as well. So here it is (if you're not interested in the tech of it you can skip this post!):
Grow Tent Systems
I have my own server with a VM running Home Assistant. This 'operating system' is the brain for a whole slew of devices in my home. Temp and humidity sensors, motion sensors, door and window sensors, wireless plugs and switches, TV controls, LED light controls, automated weather station, etc etc. I've had HA for many many years now and decided I'd use it for my grow tent controller as well. You can think of this as any other commercial controller out there, but not as a single contained unit you plug things into. In fact my server is in another room on another floor, no way connecting to the tent with wires.
Great, that's outside the tent. What's inside? I have a total of 3 wireless plugs right now, one for the grow lights, exhaust fan, and humidifier. Within HA is an add-on called NodeRed which allows you to program things using a graphical node based system. It's got a learning curve, but once you get the basics you can unlock the true power of this 'programming language' if you will. As a basic example, with a timer node once it reaches whatever time I specify it'll send out a message at that time to turn the grow lights on or off. Easy, right? More on this later. In addition to the plugs I have 2 temperature and humidity sensors, one that plugs in that I made from scratch and one that is wireless using Zigbee.
Now to the control panel. Here's a pic of the dashboard I've created that holds all of this information as well as buttons I can press. This dashboard is also viewable on an 8" tablet that (will be shortly) mounted on the exterior of the tent. The tablet itself is set to use the forward facing camera to detect motion and turn the screen on or off. So, the screen is off, and I walk up to it before unzipping the tent. The screen comes on automatically and I can interact with my buttons and view the information.
The NodeRed flows update the plant stage counters (bottom row of first column) every day at 12:01 AM. I can manually turn on/off the lights, exhaust, and humidifier. The middle row of those buttons allow me to change the state of the plant, and thus, the environment and light schedule. Plants want different temp and humidity numbers during each phase, so once I leave seedling and go to veg I'll hit that Veg Cycle button and boom, the tent will maintain a different humidity level and change the light schedule (if it were different. Right now seedling and veg cycle are at 18/6.) Once I hit the flower button it'll change the lights to 12/12 and maintain a lower humidity range. Just with one button press either on my computer or on the tablet.
Features
What else can it do? Well, I have a calculation setup so every time the humidifier turns on it makes sure the humidity is rising. It waits 6 minutes, and if the humidity has not increased from when the humidifier was turned on, it'll shut the plug off and send my phone a message saying I need to add water. It also pops a card up on the dashboard. It'll be put into a "needs water" state and will not turn back on until I tell the system I've added more water. I can reset the state from the tablet, my computer, or phone.
Another issue I've run across and can kill the entire grow is what happens if the humidifier is turned on, but the wifi plug becomes unavailable when it's time to turn it off? The wifi plug I was using was a cheap knock-off and kept disconnecting from the server. So, if the humidifier is actively running and it attempts to send an "off" message to the plug, but the plug is unavailable, it messages my phone and stops all activity until I manually intervene. I've since replaced the plug with a Zigbee one from Aqara and so far in the last week have had zero issues.
Okay this is getting too long haha. Lastly, back to those buttons, if I press and hold the Last Water, Last Fert, and Plant Age cards they will reset the numbers. So once I water I'll reset the Last Water by pressing and holding it, and it resets to 0 and start counting up every day. Makes this extremely easy to track days in seedling, veg, flower, watered, not watered, fertilized, etc.
Finally, I wanted to show the NodeRed flows. This will probably make sense to almost nobody, but it shows the logical flow of events controlling the various systems within the tent.
And this pic shows the humidifier section. Even if you zoom into the pic you won't be able to read the nodes...but this gives an idea of how complicated these can be to do exactly what I want it to do.
Phew, ok. That's the last of it. If you made it this far, thanks for taking the time to read about the setup! It took a few weeks of testing and tweaking to get it dialed to where now I just sit back and watch pretty much. It's been very worth it so far!
Wow I got even more geeked for your grow and for ours to be so close together!
This is very impressive!
- Thread starter
- #32
AspenCultivator
Well-Known Member
I haven't heard of them and just checked them out, they look really interesting. I'd say they'd be great for plants that need the soil to maintain a constant moisture. Since weed plants need a wet/dry cycle, especially towards the bottom of the pot, I'm not sure these would be practical. But hey, you never know, and maybe someone has used them already?
Thanks Lootz!
- Thread starter
- #33
AspenCultivator
Well-Known Member
Day 9
Hi everyone, pretty straightforward update today. It's been 5 days since their first full soak watering and the cups are getting lighter. I measured my dry cup at 185g and the two girls were at 212g (#1) and 220g (#2), so I'm going to re-weigh them tomorrow and decide if they'll be watered or if I can wait one more day, but I'm betting they'll need watered tomorrow.
Today the lights were moved from 36" to 33". Second node is coming in nicely for #1, and #2 just seems funky at this point. Doesn't hurt to keep it going for now of course, so we'll see how the next week or two plays out for that one.
Hi everyone, pretty straightforward update today. It's been 5 days since their first full soak watering and the cups are getting lighter. I measured my dry cup at 185g and the two girls were at 212g (#1) and 220g (#2), so I'm going to re-weigh them tomorrow and decide if they'll be watered or if I can wait one more day, but I'm betting they'll need watered tomorrow.
Today the lights were moved from 36" to 33". Second node is coming in nicely for #1, and #2 just seems funky at this point. Doesn't hurt to keep it going for now of course, so we'll see how the next week or two plays out for that one.
I've got a twin of your #2 slightly dysfunctionalDay 9
Hi everyone, pretty straightforward update today. It's been 5 days since their first full soak watering and the cups are getting lighter. I measured my dry cup at 185g and the two girls were at 212g (#1) and 220g (#2), so I'm going to re-weigh them tomorrow and decide if they'll be watered or if I can wait one more day, but I'm betting they'll need watered tomorrow.
Today the lights were moved from 36" to 33". Second node is coming in nicely for #1, and #2 just seems funky at this point. Doesn't hurt to keep it going for now of course, so we'll see how the next week or two plays out for that one.
- Thread starter
- #35
AspenCultivator
Well-Known Member
Yeah I noticed that from your journal! Definitely fascinating to see the differences in phenos between the seeds.
Idk just one word . Dam.I know, I'm stoked to see how these grow on, it'll be really cool to see.
Since not much is going on I wanted to take the opportunity to outline my automated environment setup. I did this in the failed white widow journal, but this journal wouldn't be complete without it as well. So here it is (if you're not interested in the tech of it you can skip this post!):
Grow Tent Systems
I have my own server with a VM running Home Assistant. This 'operating system' is the brain for a whole slew of devices in my home. Temp and humidity sensors, motion sensors, door and window sensors, wireless plugs and switches, TV controls, LED light controls, automated weather station, etc etc. I've had HA for many many years now and decided I'd use it for my grow tent controller as well. You can think of this as any other commercial controller out there, but not as a single contained unit you plug things into. In fact my server is in another room on another floor, no way connecting to the tent with wires.
Great, that's outside the tent. What's inside? I have a total of 3 wireless plugs right now, one for the grow lights, exhaust fan, and humidifier. Within HA is an add-on called NodeRed which allows you to program things using a graphical node based system. It's got a learning curve, but once you get the basics you can unlock the true power of this 'programming language' if you will. As a basic example, with a timer node once it reaches whatever time I specify it'll send out a message at that time to turn the grow lights on or off. Easy, right? More on this later. In addition to the plugs I have 2 temperature and humidity sensors, one that plugs in that I made from scratch and one that is wireless using Zigbee.
Now to the control panel. Here's a pic of the dashboard I've created that holds all of this information as well as buttons I can press. This dashboard is also viewable on an 8" tablet that (will be shortly) mounted on the exterior of the tent. The tablet itself is set to use the forward facing camera to detect motion and turn the screen on or off. So, the screen is off, and I walk up to it before unzipping the tent. The screen comes on automatically and I can interact with my buttons and view the information.
The NodeRed flows update the plant stage counters (bottom row of first column) every day at 12:01 AM. I can manually turn on/off the lights, exhaust, and humidifier. The middle row of those buttons allow me to change the state of the plant, and thus, the environment and light schedule. Plants want different temp and humidity numbers during each phase, so once I leave seedling and go to veg I'll hit that Veg Cycle button and boom, the tent will maintain a different humidity level and change the light schedule (if it were different. Right now seedling and veg cycle are at 18/6.) Once I hit the flower button it'll change the lights to 12/12 and maintain a lower humidity range. Just with one button press either on my computer or on the tablet.
Features
What else can it do? Well, I have a calculation setup so every time the humidifier turns on it makes sure the humidity is rising. It waits 6 minutes, and if the humidity has not increased from when the humidifier was turned on, it'll shut the plug off and send my phone a message saying I need to add water. It also pops a card up on the dashboard. It'll be put into a "needs water" state and will not turn back on until I tell the system I've added more water. I can reset the state from the tablet, my computer, or phone.
Another issue I've run across and can kill the entire grow is what happens if the humidifier is turned on, but the wifi plug becomes unavailable when it's time to turn it off? The wifi plug I was using was a cheap knock-off and kept disconnecting from the server. So, if the humidifier is actively running and it attempts to send an "off" message to the plug, but the plug is unavailable, it messages my phone and stops all activity until I manually intervene. I've since replaced the plug with a Zigbee one from Aqara and so far in the last week have had zero issues.
Okay this is getting too long haha. Lastly, back to those buttons, if I press and hold the Last Water, Last Fert, and Plant Age cards they will reset the numbers. So once I water I'll reset the Last Water by pressing and holding it, and it resets to 0 and start counting up every day. Makes this extremely easy to track days in seedling, veg, flower, watered, not watered, fertilized, etc.
Finally, I wanted to show the NodeRed flows. This will probably make sense to almost nobody, but it shows the logical flow of events controlling the various systems within the tent.
And this pic shows the humidifier section. Even if you zoom into the pic you won't be able to read the nodes...but this gives an idea of how complicated these can be to do exactly what I want it to do.
Phew, ok. That's the last of it. If you made it this far, thanks for taking the time to read about the setup! It took a few weeks of testing and tweaking to get it dialed to where now I just sit back and watch pretty much. It's been very worth it so far!
Show some of the equipment. So people can really see and stuff. Cause I'm curious on all that stuff. Grower assistant. I need one. But can I have mine tall blonde and a little jacked but not so much. Lmao
- Thread starter
- #38
AspenCultivator
Well-Known Member
Thanks 7Dust, it's been a pleasure to set it all up and tweak it around. It's so nice to have it dialed in at this point, really I'm just waiting and watching and that's about it.
As for the equipment pictures, here are a couple.
This pic shows the outlet strip inside the tent. The white rectangle in the top left spot is an Aqara wireless outlet. It uses the zigbee wireless protocol (it needs its own hub, which I use the Aqara M2) and has had zero drops since I first set it up. The other two white, round plugs are Etekcity wifi outlets and show up as unavailable occasionally so they may be getting switched out with Aqara plugs if it becomes an issue.
And here we have a cheap Wyze V3 camera. The resolution isn't very great but it gives me a near-real-time view inside the tent (about 3 seconds of delay or so). It has nightvision as well so when the light is off I can still see the plants. I may set up a timelapse once I uppot, but as it is right now the cam won't even focus on the seedlings.
Next to that is the Aqara temp/humidity sensor. It uses the zigbee protocol and I've had absolutely zero connection drops since I got it going. It's wireless and also transmits the battery percentage back to my dashboard. Once the plants start getting taller I'll probably 3D print a little holder for it so I can hang it from the ceiling and keep it at the canopy level.
And lastly here's the old temp/humidity sensor that uses MQTT to transmit the sensor values. It's a DHT22 and a PIR sensor connected to a D1 Mini that's flashed with Tasmota. I built this 'node' and a few more many years ago and I still use them in rooms to automatically turn on lights when someone walks in. However, this one in particular has been dropping connection lately so I needed a more reliable sensor and this will come out of the tent at some point.
That's Kool. I would split them cords into two different plugs. They sucker will get hot sooner or later. . That's something people really don't see on here much we pull so much power on everything growing. And fire detectors and stuff.
They grow great with a wet/dry cycle, but they don't need it. I grow in SIPS which keeps the soil constantly moist, in coco grows you're not supposed to ever let the coir dry out, and then there's hydro.
I'd think those emitters would work great with canna. Still need a reservoir though, so wouldn't work for you.
Lots of ways to get it done, that's for sure.