Refriedbeano's Outdoor Mayhem

[refriedbeano]

This is my third season growing outdoors. I've been building out on public land next to a dam, since last year I've been harassed by the water authority, the head of security of this organization has found all my "sites" so I'm going to have to build a new one when the seedlings mature up.
I've been designing and testing some new machines to automatically dry and cure marijuana, called the budcure box and cannaster. They are needing some attention but I still have allot of time to work on them.
Right now I just got the seeds in and I'm almost ready to get into gardening mode. I have to glue down the cloche greenhouse that i have to some foam board because last year ants ate my seedlings. I haven't seen any around but you never know. The type of marijuana is called grandaddy purple Autoflower seeds, from 420, but I've noticed that the phenotype is all over the place with this company, so it might not even matter what they are. But I got 20 of them, and plane to start small and plant only two of them, then keep on planting as i move them out of the cloche.
For the BudCure Box I have to CNC a new PCB because I have had nothing but problems trying to get the relay or mosfet switches to actually work. It takes so much to CNC the board, put all the components on it, make sure it all works only to find it didn't. But other than that i just have to install a fan and its ready to dry.
For the Cannaster (the machine inside the BudCure Box) the lid isn't designed right and it doesn't let the pressure get down enough to dry the plant material. I have to redesign the lid and gasket to try and improve on that, because in the enclosed space the buds will grow mold in only half a day. But the whole purpose of the Cannaster is to get the bud to the perfect 63% rh so you can throw it in a mason jar and store it away, without burping it.

Strain/s: Grandaddy purple
Genetic Makeup: autoflower
Pot/Bucket Size: 3.5 Gallon
Grow Space: 5'X5' platform outside
How Many Plants: adding one a week once started
Environment: Outdoor
Stage: yet to be planted
Medium: Fox Farms soil
Pests: Expect the unexpected
Watering: TBD

 

[Bill284]

This is my third season growing outdoors. I've been building out on public land next to a dam, since last year I've been harassed by the water authority, the head of security of this organization has found all my "sites" so I'm going to have to build a new one when the seedlings mature up.
I've been designing and testing some new machines to automatically dry and cure marijuana, called the budcure box and cannaster. They are needing some attention but I still have allot of time to work on them.
Right now I just got the seeds in and I'm almost ready to get into gardening mode. I have to glue down the cloche greenhouse that i have to some foam board because last year ants ate my seedlings. I haven't seen any around but you never know. The type of marijuana is called grandaddy purple Autoflower seeds, from 420, but I've noticed that the phenotype is all over the place with this company, so it might not even matter what they are. But I got 20 of them, and plane to start small and plant only two of them, then keep on planting as i move them out of the cloche.
For the BudCure Box I have to CNC a new PCB because I have had nothing but problems trying to get the relay or mosfet switches to actually work. It takes so much to CNC the board, put all the components on it, make sure it all works only to find it didn't. But other than that i just have to install a fan and its ready to dry.
For the Cannaster (the machine inside the BudCure Box) the lid isn't designed right and it doesn't let the pressure get down enough to dry the plant material. I have to redesign the lid and gasket to try and improve on that, because in the enclosed space the buds will grow mold in only half a day. But the whole purpose of the Cannaster is to get the bud to the perfect 63% rh so you can throw it in a mason jar and store it away, without burping it.

Strain/s: Grandaddy purple
Genetic Makeup: autoflower
Pot/Bucket Size: 3.5 Gallon
Grow Space: 5'X5' platform outside
How Many Plants: adding one a week once started
Environment: Outdoor
Stage: yet to be planted
Medium: Fox Farms soil
Pests: Expect the unexpected
Watering: TBD

Great start buddy.
Welcome to 420magazine


Stay safe
Bill284

 

[Papa OG]

Looking good! Been there my friend! Keep your head on a swivel! You will find something. Ive been there with i.l.g.m seeds. Literally could not grow 2 plants the same. Nearly 50 seeds, gave up. Went to mystery beans from bags over the years. Much more consistent!


Enjoy yourself stay safe! We're all here if you need help!

 

[refriedbeano]

Thanks for the kind welcome! I was thinking with autoflower the ruderalis gene contributes most to the phenotype, but last year was all over the place. I don't really mind though because i just want to test out my machines.... BUT

has anyone ever tried to get a feminized autoflower to herm? I have tried to use the silver method but on two separate occasions nothing ever happened. I was planning on maybe getting some other genetics just so i can make my own seed supply.

 

[Papa OG]

I have had some of their seeds that were extreme gsc that hermied.

If that's what you looking to do. It shouldn't be hard. I works get it to flower, then totally f the light schedule 12 hrs her 6 hrs here 18 hrs here 3 hrs here etc.

You could always get male pollen from a photo, try that

 

[refriedbeano]

Getting the spot together, only took me one go to get this platform up and its pretty solid. I drove inch thick rebar into the ground to hold it in place.
Planning on growing regular genetics in 15 gallon pots along side the autoflowers. I'm just wondering how im going to get all females into the 15 gallon pots without having to transplant at flowering. Maybe I will just order demonized and try my luck at inducing herms.
Next up for this spot is getting atleast 3 55 gallon barrels for water, bending some rebar to hold up some bug netting, and working on camoflauging. Specifically im worried about drones spotting me, but its not a huge concern.
I had to cut down a tree and this vulture must have a nest back in the rocks cause he jumped into the tree as I was trying to make it fall over.

 

[Papa OG]

Looking good my friend!

 

[refriedbeano]

ok guys, kicking it into high gear here soon. The mission was to get a 55 gallon car wash drum back to the site with my boat. It was a white knuckle ride back with it. Imagine yourself going up against the wind with a 7.5 amp hour battery that's almost certainly going to die at any minute. And once it goes your either gonna have to paddle like hell against the wind and waves, or just turn around and say its gonna take all day. And i was already on empty as far as physical stamina. Luckily it powered through and I got to my dock. (yes i built a dock that no one messes with)
So I got the drum back to the site and filled it up using my harbor freight gas water pump. The thing is a beast, pushing it up 50 feet and through about 400 feet of hose.
I have 3 flowering autos moved into 3 gallon pots, 2 more autos about two weeks old, and I just planted about 10 seeds I got from bean patch seeds. They sent me 20 of them for 40 bucks... so i gotta get some more seedling pots.
I also managed to deploy my automatic mister for my tobacco seeds. They are so small that the soil has to stay moist most of the time, requiring about 3 mists a day.
The next mission is to haul the rest of the supplies to the site (mostly the soil, but I'm going to wait till the last minute since I am so exhausted all the time) and setup the bug screen. I'm thinking I will design some 3d prints to attach 16' lengths of rebar to the platform and drape the netting across that. I might also just use some wood and drill some holes to slide the rebar through. If I haven't said it yet, I have a construction site I'm pillaging (they stole from me way more than I'm going to steal from them btw).

 

[Bill284]

ok guys, kicking it into high gear here soon. The mission was to get a 55 gallon car wash drum back to the site with my boat. It was a white knuckle ride back with it. Imagine yourself going up against the wind with a 7.5 amp hour battery that's almost certainly going to die at any minute. And once it goes your either gonna have to paddle like hell against the wind and waves, or just turn around and say its gonna take all day. And i was already on empty as far as physical stamina. Luckily it powered through and I got to my dock. (yes i built a dock that no one messes with)
So I got the drum back to the site and filled it up using my harbor freight gas water pump. The thing is a beast, pushing it up 50 feet and through about 400 feet of hose.
I have 3 flowering autos moved into 3 gallon pots, 2 more autos about two weeks old, and I just planted about 10 seeds I got from bean patch seeds. They sent me 20 of them for 40 bucks... so i gotta get some more seedling pots.
I also managed to deploy my automatic mister for my tobacco seeds. They are so small that the soil has to stay moist most of the time, requiring about 3 mists a day.
The next mission is to haul the rest of the supplies to the site (mostly the soil, but I'm going to wait till the last minute since I am so exhausted all the time) and setup the bug screen. I'm thinking I will design some 3d prints to attach 16' lengths of rebar to the platform and drape the netting across that. I might also just use some wood and drill some holes to slide the rebar through. If I haven't said it yet, I have a construction site I'm pillaging (they stole from me way more than I'm going to steal from them btw).

Good work Amigo
Your in for a heck of a grow.


Stay safe
Bill284

 

[refriedbeano]

"King Kong ain't got shit on me!" - Denzel Washington

Starting work on the BudCure after last seasons debauchery. The BudCure is broken down into two machines, the BudCure Box and the Cannaster. The status of the project is that I've tentatively tested it on tobacco, but freezing weather destroyed the harvest. My objectives for the BudCure Box is to get a new PCB made, make my own wiring harnesses, and get it up and running again.
The Cannaster was also only a half success last season. I got the machine to mostly work only it couldn't get the vacuum down below 9 psi. I found out that its absolutely essential to get the psi down to below 5 or the product will mold. Luckily I've been calibrating my 3D printers so I should be able to make some adjustments and get it working in short order.
Once these machines are working again I will have the joyous task of developing a better program to dry my buds.

 

[Bill284]

"King Kong ain't got shit on me!" - Denzel Washington

Starting work on the BudCure after last seasons debauchery. The BudCure is broken down into two machines, the BudCure Box and the Cannaster. The status of the project is that I've tentatively tested it on tobacco, but freezing weather destroyed the harvest. My objectives for the BudCure Box is to get a new PCB made, make my own wiring harnesses, and get it up and running again.
The Cannaster was also only a half success last season. I got the machine to mostly work only it couldn't get the vacuum down below 9 psi. I found out that its absolutely essential to get the psi down to below 5 or the product will mold. Luckily I've been calibrating my 3D printers so I should be able to make some adjustments and get it working in short order.
Once these machines are working again I will have the joyous task of developing a better program to dry my buds.

Girls look good Buddy.
Your device? What is it and how does it work?


Stay safe
Bill284

 

[refriedbeano]

Girls look good Buddy.
Your device? What is it and how does it work?


Stay safe
Bill284

Thanks for asking! You hang your freshly cut harvest in the budcure box. It uses a load cell (weight sensor) to track how dry the buds are getting. For the first phase of drying, your just using the fan to drive off the moisture. Then to slow down the drying, use the thermoelectric cooling device to condense the moisture out. Once you reach your target moisture, which is going to be just a bit higher than what you need to can/cure the buds, you load them into the Cannaster. This device has an automatic lid and uses a vacuum pump to dry the buds from the inside. Using this machine you won't have to burp any jars, just go straight to curing.

 

[Bill284]

Thanks for asking! You hang your freshly cut harvest in the budcure box. It uses a load cell (weight sensor) to track how dry the buds are getting. For the first phase of drying, your just using the fan to drive off the moisture. Then to slow down the drying, use the thermoelectric cooling device to condense the moisture out. Once you reach your target moisture, which is going to be just a bit higher than what you need to can/cure the buds, you load them into the Cannaster. This device has an automatic lid and uses a vacuum pump to dry the buds from the inside. Using this machine you won't have to burp any jars, just go straight to curing.

Brilliant.


Stay safe
Bill284

 

[refriedbeano]

Allright, I was thinking getting the budcure box up and running was gonna be a few days kind of thing, but it turned into a few weeks! First thing I couldn't explain was why I couldn't get the transistor I was using to switch the fan off and on to turn off all the way. I did a test with a breadboard and it worked pretty good, then when I put everything together with my pcb it didn't work at all. So I had to switch to a mosfet. Then I had an ordeal where I wanted to switch sensors to save on memory, so i could use a screen buffer on the OLED. This takes up about half of the memory, but lets me refresh the sensor readings individually instead of having to reset the entire screen (which doesn't look nice and my work around doesn't really work). Well I almost succeeded, I had about 200 bytes to play with, but it only worked for about a second. There goes an evening of work.... Next thing I know, nothing is working when i go to test it out. First my mosfets fail, but it only took me a half day to realize I wasn't using a flyback diode. Have to go make another pcb... and its just been like driving down a road with speedbumps every time i hit the gas. But finally I am done.
The video shows my setup, the sensor screen shows the temperature of the TEC, then the temperature of the box and the humidity level. At the bottom is the weight. To turn on the TEC you go the TEC on/off screen and click in, which brings you to the next menu where you choose whether you want to turn on the fan, the TEC, or use both. I still have to put some programs in. I have already sorted out how to get the TEC at the dew point so condensation forms. I'm thinking I will use the fan for the first few days of drying, then switch over to the tec for the final week. I'm thinking the target will be two weeks total dry time. And I'm going to have to think about how to use the weight data, whether I'm going to keep it in memory...

So I'm about a week away from my first live test, I'm just going to harvest one plant (out of three that are ready). I still have to get the cannaster up and running... all the electronics are working but I have to 3D print a new lid and pour a new silicon gasket, and get it pulling a good vacuum (down to 5 psi).

 

[refriedbeano]

First test is underway. I just harvested and trimmed the bud and then hung it up on the load cell, its reading 24 grams right now, though its fluctuating a bit. This harvest is way too small to do any active drying (the fan and the TEC), and the humidity level isn't even rising above 70. But the real point is to test the user friendliness of the budcure box. The screen setup is a major stumbling block, I have to switch the microcontroller for a less popular type called the atmega4809-pf, which is still in a DIP package (not surface mount) so I can still make the pcb in house... and it still costs only 4$. Probably with that controller I could put in a touchscreen, not sure if i'll have time to figure that out though.
And my regular seeds that i planted a few weeks ago are looking amazing. I really enjoy these much more than the autoflower genetics. I have to get some soil up to my spot this weekend to plant them into 7 gallon pots.
I'm going to try and get as much time as I can with the dry cycle in the budcure box, I'm thinking atleast a week. The first two days the plant can fend off mold, but after that it'll get ugly quick. Once its to about 10 grams it'll be time for the cannaster, which I'm putting together right now.

 

[refriedbeano]

I'm having some problems with the weights. I have a 1kg load cell, 2.2 pounds, which should have a resolution down to .1 grams. Now measuring that low is kinda difficult because I have all of the electronics right above the load cell platform where I hang the buds, so any wire touching it at all will add weight to it. And the harder thing is that the reading will drift ( and I am trying to read moisture loss over the time of a day or so ). But what I forgot to do was record the initial weight with my real scale, so I have no idea what the target weight was supposed to be. I went ahead and smoked a little bit of the sample and now I'm on to testing it out on the cannaster.
So I was successful in getting it into working order again. I just had to make a few design changes for the part that connects the vacuum line and data wires. It now holds onto the vacuum as well as i need it to.... the program I'm running right now is an automatic drying program which turns on the pump every half hour for five minutes, held between 7 and 8psi. Atmospheric pressure is 14.7. This is a quick drying routine, they will be dehydrated by the morning.
What I still have to do is find some salts to do a calibration of the humidity sensor. I'm using one of those weather station sensors which can read temp, humidity, and pressure in one small chip, the bme280. Since the purpose of this machine is to reach the perfect moisture content (over the shortest time possible to limit the risk of mildew) I need a pretty accurate 65% reading. Then I can use the humidity sensor reading to stop the pump.

 

[refriedbeano]

Started a GITHUB account for the BudCure machines

GitHub - 1freemiracle/budcure: Version 1 of the budcure box and cannaster

Version 1 of the budcure box and cannaster. Contribute to 1freemiracle/budcure development by creating an account on GitHub.

github.com

 

[refriedbeano]

So I've decided the arduino nano has got to go! I need real-time updates for my variables. And I also decided I wanted confirmed numbers from my hydrometer. So I decided to make the effort to switch to the D1-mini, which is totally different from the arduino boards. It can communicate using bluetooth or wifi and has so much more memory, and its still smaller than the arduino nano. The only problem is that its got allot less pins, but I sat down and looked really good at what I could do for it and realized that it would actually work to make everything better. So I'm switching to the D1-mini before I harvest my plant next week.
And for the hydrometer, I decided on going for a two point calibration, one with rock salt and another with magnesium chloride. I'm using a precision humidity sensor from sparkfun called the shtc3. With rock salt, it read dead on 75% after 7 hours. I'm running the magnesium salt test right now, it is at 40% after 40 minutes, so I expect it'll be dead on also.

Here I'm running the D1-mini i2c line off of the rx/tx pins. The only problem is that I can't use the serial monitor for debugging purposes. I still have to test the other components of the BudCure Box, I should have just one pin left over.

 

[KeyFinger]

So I've decided the arduino nano has got to go! I need real-time updates for my variables. And I also decided I wanted confirmed numbers from my hydrometer. So I decided to make the effort to switch to the D1-mini, which is totally different from the arduino boards. It can communicate using bluetooth or wifi and has so much more memory, and its still smaller than the arduino nano. The only problem is that its got allot less pins, but I sat down and looked really good at what I could do for it and realized that it would actually work to make everything better. So I'm switching to the D1-mini before I harvest my plant next week.
And for the hydrometer, I decided on going for a two point calibration, one with rock salt and another with magnesium chloride. I'm using a precision humidity sensor from sparkfun called the shtc3. With rock salt, it read dead on 75% after 7 hours. I'm running the magnesium salt test right now, it is at 40% after 40 minutes, so I expect it'll be dead on also.

Here I'm running the D1-mini i2c line off of the rx/tx pins. The only problem is that I can't use the serial monitor for debugging purposes. I still have to test the other components of the BudCure Box, I should have just one pin left over.

Something made with your own hands and skills, while may look not as amusing as a things from the store, always proves to be something special. It's great to see how talented peoples are in making things...

 

[refriedbeano]

Ok guys, we are in position to bring in the harvest later this year. I have 10 really good looking transplants thats been in the ground for about a week now. The weather has been beautiful and these guys look like they're going to pack a punch! So much better than autos....

The soil i'm using is setup so i don't theoretically have to fertilize them. I put a couple of inches of super soil in the bottom of each pot (coir, perlite, worm castings, azomite, kelp, and Dr.Earth tomato fertilizer all allowed to hot compost a few months) and then I used some soil from what was supposed to be my garden bed. I made that soil late last year using the top soil and leaf mold I found around an oak tree. It has a really nice texture!

For the BudCure, I have made some upgrades that make it into an actually useful machine. First I remade the electronics using the D1 mini, and it is working smoothly. The display doesn't flicker and the variables are being updated in real time.

So now I have to focus in on the foremost problem, the fact that the load cell doesn't work that well. One part of the problem was with how I attached the removable tray to the load cell, so i redesigned that part using 30 little neodymium magnets. Now the tray is held more firmly and provides decent repeatability.

The next problem with the load cell is that the measurement will drift over time. The process is that you tare the scale before you hang the bud up, then you let the buds hang for a while and remove them, then the scale will go down to zero + an offset that the scale drifted. I have a few theories, one is that static electricity is building up and providing the offset, so i could setup a circuit that would ground the load cell. Another theory is that I'm polling the load cell too often in my code, so i'm going to redo that section.
Hopefully I can overcome this challenge because I want the main function of drying to be based on the weight. So you can just dial in the target weight you want the budcure to dry to.

The bud in the picture weighed 40 grams when i harvested it 3 days ago. It now weighs in at 17 grams, at 10 grams I'm going to put them into the Cannaster. Work on the cannaster is pretty much done. I have just finished getting in calibration data for the bme humidity sensor, using MgCl and NaCl. I have to get Chatgpt to make a math equation for a 2 point calibration.