I’ve been spending some of my dwindling mental energy to think about how I would control a grow room if I had the ability to control every aspect remotely. So far I am breaking out the things that could be measured and what should happen if certain measurements are hit. These are my initial notes around this topic as I start looking at how I can make a coordinated solution to remote monitoring/growing.
First, these are the list of things that I think can be monitored in some fashion:
Light: Lux (easily monitored with existing low cost sensors), PAR (much harder, and likely too expensive to build)
Atmosphere: Temperature, Humidity, CO2
Medium: Water temp, PH, PPM, water volume (AFAIK there are no sensors for measuring PH and PPM so those might be a no-go).
Power: Fans, lights, heater, humidifier, dehumidifier
Once I figure out the thing I can actually measure, the next step is figuring out what ranges I want to measure and what happens when the parameter is outside that range.
Temperature ranges for alerts and controls:
Suitable grow temp should remain between 50F and 90F depending on growing stage
We can set alerts for both 50F and 90F
We can turn on/off equipment based on the temp reported. Mock code:
If temp >= 90F check the fans and send alert
If fans = off turn fans on
else if fans = on check the heater
if heater = on turn heater off
else if heater = off check the lights
if lights = on turn lights off
If temp <= 50F check the fans and send alert
if fans = on turn fans off
else if fans = off check the heater
if heater = off turn heater on
// in the case of lights, we don’t want to be turning them on without human intervention because we might be in flower…
For humidity it would be similar but using a different range. I was thinking something like 30% to 80%, and we would use code similar to above. One of the questions is how to prioritize what you would turn on/off to address an outlying issue and essentially automate the system to adjust what it can to keep the plants alive long enough for human intervention.
For water monitoring all I know I can do right now is monitor water temps - in that case I’d probably just use an alert to let me know if things out of whack.
This is how far I’ve gotten on the thinking so far, but the next step is considering physical automation. Using servos and valves to open and close pipes, etc. based on what the sensors are reading. I need to see if there is any kind of PH and/or PPM sensor I can use in this kind of system. If I can find those then I can automated the recording/logging of data right from my reservoirs, and potentially build something to let me add PH Up or Down based on PH range. PPM is a different best entirely and would require me to think about the nute line I am using and a bunch of other stuff… but auto adjust PH could allow me to be on the road for a week without worry.