ROFLMAO…not a bad idea.
Start simple and build from there, like any complex system design. Well, this is not all that complex, but you get my meaning. LOL
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I have several time lapse sequences that I did using my DSLR camera taking photos every 5 minutes over the entire lights on period.
It is amazing how much the plants move around. It is quite eerie to watch.
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Yeah I was thinking of using a DDC controller we use to control chillers,boilers and air handlers and reprogram to run my grow room algorithms. I did direct digital building controls for years and this would carry over nicely
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@merlin44 - your passion and how you applied your day job to your grow is inspiring! - I’m thinking maybe I can even bootstrap a solution with existing tech (I really just need smart outlets and some sensors, I think 
).
The VDP chart has sent me in a bit of a panic because it seems hard to match, the seed sprouted 3 days after being put in the solo cup on 9/20, since then I’ve been trying to keep it around 70 - 80 F and 40 - 50 RH, which is wrong at this stage according to the chart. I’ve been finagling with the humidifiers, heat, AC, exhaust for a bit now! I’ve gotten it to 75 F / 50% for now. Using an AC, a humidifier and the exhaust fan off.
I basically tried to create the environment that I read the strain (GDP) likes but didn’t account for this stage being different, though it does seem to be working out ok so far.
RH, which seems ok for veg but as a sprout it the chart says to bring it up a bit. The challenge seems to be that the exhaust fan gets the humidity out faster than it can be maintained. I’ve tried a little humidifier in the tent and a bigger one out of it, by the air input which is how I’m getting it to maintain at the moment (with the fan off).
I don’t have a humidity cover on the cup, that seems like it would make all this easier, that being said I read that it’s not good to use but it seems like every sprout I see is in a solo cup with some kind of cover on it.
I’m sure the plant itself will start contributing to the environment when it gets bigger and I hope that makes it a bit more stable - I’m still working out the correlations between the env in the tent, the closet and the room.
@TheGrowKid that sounds like a blast to work on one day, def. curious about your grow room algos if you’re willing to share :).
Grow rooms, custom controllers, apps, etc. I’m getting ahead of myself, I’m not even a week into a 2x2x60 in a super tight closet fit.
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She pushed up past the edge of the cup overnight so I lowered the light to 12". I’m questioning if my light is good enough or if I had it too far away.
It looks like I got it dialed in a bit more today, it’s a balance between the room a/c, humidifier, exhaust fan, light height (heat), etc. I’m sure you all already know this :).
It’s been pretty stable around 75 f / 75 - 80% RH, so there’s still some tweaking to do. I basically get up and turn the exhaust on when I see the RH going too high (b/c I put a room size humidifier in the tent), or depending on the temp I’ll turn on the room AC.
I had a bag over the cup and the numbers were great but in a really short amount of time the sprout was leaning, like I was trying to find a way to get better light through the bag, so I took it off.
I was thinking about putting the exhaust fan on a timer to run for 30 seconds or so every 15 minutes or whatever and then getting one of these:
for the humidifier.
I’ve really been chasing that VDP at the same time trying to get it to stop stretching, last night it was just below the lid of the cup and now she’s already over, though she seemed to stop now I think. It looks like the light meter app I have is reading 15k lux so I’ll make a note of that in my log.
So far I’m tracking:
date, entry, relative humidity, temp, light distance (from canopy), lux at canopy
I basically make an entry whenever I adjust anything and found myself wanting to see the impact on the env. over time. I’m doing it in a google sheet so I hope to add some recent trend charts that I can get quick glances at.
@Roudy420 @merlin44 wondering what each of you thought? Sorry if it’s such a long post 
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I sounds like you are getting a handle on your grow environment. Taking notes and recording results is, in my view, the best way to learn the ropes. Well done.
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I love taking photos of her, I’m saying that knowing that I couldn’t get great focus on this:
She’s out of her turtle phase
I need to get my dslr back from my bro and setup on a tripod…
@merlin44 good to hear, thank you for all the tips/help/info so far we really appreciate it, your new grow looks sick and so scaled up, I can’t wait to see how they turn out!
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Up to this grow, I have taken photos of each of my plants plus a group photo each and every morning after lights “ON”.
When substantial buds start forming I take close up photos of several colas on each plant in addition to the other portrait photos. Closer to harvest I use the closeup photos to evaluate trichomes.
I have thousands of cannabis photos on my server. LOL
Now I do it out of habit plus I like doing it…Early on, I did it so that I could compare growth over time and to compare one grow to the next.
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That is a neat little controller there. I would buy one myself if I wasn’t already using this
It has it’s own sensor and shuts off or turns down when it gets close to the desired humidity I set.
That humidifier looks cool. I’m going to hold back on the rH controller or other gear until she gets more into her veg stage. I think I could have used the light to manage the temperature better and I probably shouldn’t have been running the exhaust fan 24/7.
It looks like the env is starting to stabilize a bit so I want to reduce the amount of changes over the next day or so and see how she reacts, that being said I have an HLG light inbound (or label created, but who’s clicking obsessively on tracking… 
).
She has seemed to stop stretching and her little pointed leaves are starting to unfurl more :). Though one does seem a little stuck but it’s been opening up more and more.
Your tip on light measurement was a huge help yesterday, thank you.
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That looks cool, so you just drop the block into the soil and keep on trucking? Do you soak the seed or anything like that before you put it in?
I originally didn’t even want to use a solo cup, I wanted to use a kind soil setup and they suggest just dropping the seed right into a setup pot. I only started w/out it because the seeds got here first and I’m excited to get off the $$ schwag.
Your photos show much nicer growth in presumably a similar amount of time, if I don’t get to try kind and this current one doesn’t work out I’ll give one of those setups a shot next time around. Thanks for sharing it.
@SpaceInvader yes I soak the seed until it drops to bottom of cup then I pour water and seed into a paper towel, fold in half and put in my propagation tray with some on and heat mat on underneath to keep it warm and humid. Usually within a day seeds have popped open and begun to show a root 2 days at most using this method. I was lazy and didn’t feel like going to garage to get soil so I just soaked a Rockwool cube in a very light nutrient solution and placed sprout inside. Maybe about 2 days later it emerged and started its upward journey. When I saw root at bottom of cube I transplanted into a cup of soil. When I get maybe 4-5 nodes I’ll transplant to a larger pot and begin training. But I have had a 100% success rate using this method of germination. If seeds don’t sink after 24 hours I toss em out, those that sink always germinate for me
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@TheGrowKid can’t argue with those stats!
Esther’s leaves are looking better by the minute I think. I mean the pointy leaves (cotyledon?) seem to be unfurling and she seems to have stopped stretching up. Yours look like they got that right out of the gate.
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@SpaceInvader no mine went about 3-4 inches up before it even dropped the seed shell and sprouted cotyledon leaves. I buried the cube pretty deep so the stem would have some support that’s why it looks short
@SpaceInvader yours looks only a couple days behind mine. Seed germinated 9/12, emerged from Rockwool cube 9/14, planted in soil(cup) 9/17 and began newgrowth after transplant shock recovery 9/20. Been growing fast everyday since.
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I’m having a hard time getting the tent stabilized when the external environment changes, I’m starting to track ambient metrics to see the correlation so I can make quicker adjustments in the future.
I’m specifically having a hard time with light height and intensity and how that impacts temperature at the “canopy” which then starts messing with the RH.
Would anyone happen to know what kind of lux reading I should have for a sprout? The internet seems all over the place. I don’t yet have enough data or experience to know what I’m trying to adjust to.
I saw a small fly around the lip of the solo cup so I put the exhaust fan on 24/7 and put a yellow sticky on the outside of the cup, naturally I lost a bunch of humidity so I ended up getting that RH controller I shared above which seems to be doing the trick, I have it set at 72% but find the sensor on the soil reads around 65%, the most exciting part is that I think I’ve established a room a/c, exhaust fan, humidifier, flow, but I’ve thought this before so let’s see what tomorrow brings.
Hopefully tomorrow brings the HLG QB135 light that’s recently left a close distribution center. 
I know I wouldn’t be able to really tell otherwise but she seems healthy, that one cotyledon that seemed bunched up looks to have completely unfurled, albeit a little crinkled. I’m worried that those are the leaves that start photosynthesis and that if so, the damage may hurt growth but I figure this is a journey and I want to give her a chance, she also seems to look better as I learn more and that’s a nice feeling. She did get a little more stretchy today as I finagled with the light, lux and temperature, the light / lux part of which both being suspect at the moment (a cheap light and a phone app lux meter, I’m not even actually sure what lux I should be shooting for, she seems happy around 12 - 15k by the app’s measurement - I’m hoping/ betting that when I get the HLG someone can help me figure out distance from canopy and intensity for this stage, if it’s not already listed somewhere).
I also got the filter/ fan/ light setup at the top of the tent more straight so the light is free of any obstruction (I wanted the HLG to have an easy integration and be easy to adjust to dial in).
I’m looking forward to the time when I’ll be able to start allocating some budget I need now for medicine to the setup, I hope the grow is stable enough to make some headway this first trip around, or at least learn enough to make any failure meaningful.
But she looks great I think
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