Minty - GrowRoom420 - Grow Tracking add on / automation idea

[Minty]

Wassup Groomies,

Thank you Keeno for covering my question in tonight GrowRoom YouTube chat (I love these by the way) at such short notice but the feedback was certainly worth it mate. Gives me loads to work on especially with GMO who will be fully on board by the end of this project or he gets his money back. By the way, did I mention this is all open source and totally free apart from the hidden hardware costs you may or may not invest in. I would love to know if anyone does ;O)

I wanted to post a topic to cover an idea I have had for a while which is mostly implemented and finished from a 'personal perspective' in that it is working currently to control my own GrowRoom with monitoring of the basics stats such as Humidity, Temperature, etc. while also being able to act on these 'events' by switching on/off equipment as needed. But my idea is to share this great shit with all of you because being able see and control your growroom from your phone is a wonderful tool to have in your 'Lazy Box'.

I don't want to waste too much time trying to explain the technology etc behind all I am going to be talking about in advance, nor the actual terminology I am going to be using so feel free to stop me at any point and ask for clarification on anything mentioned and I will return and clarify my words rather than trying to cover all topics in both a high and low level from the start. Make sure to ask anything you like, as this will also clarify the whole idea for everyone going forward and hopefully build up some sort of documentation along the way. The only dumb question is the one that wasn't asked.

So, basically I have this software that I have been writing for about 6 months now which is called 'Minty Hydro' and is available as an online demo (which is an old version now) but should give a good indication of where I am going with this:-

and the source code is publicly available via GitHub. This is still work in progress but if you check out the online demo using a PC browser you will see that it is quite functional considering there is NO SERVER SIDE to that demo - it all runs in your browser / mobile phone.

My initial design for this software was for the following requirements:-

• Works Offline - Internet is optional - just to stats backups
• Wireless control - less wires trailing is a good thing
• Scheduled control / Overrides based on input conditions - e.g. turn the heater off if it get above a certain temperature regardless of the built in heater thermostat.
• Automation via cheap remote controlled RF433mhz - control cheap devices such as extention leads, sockets, extract fans via -RF433 (you would be surprised how much remote stuff works on RF433 but I now also have support going in for IR - InfraRed as the Air conditioner requires this to remotely control it.)
• Cheap hosting / Offline hosting with Raspberry PI - Raspberry does me fine and the remote hosting is pretty much this thread idea so feedback will be welcome.
• Mobile Friendly to control the Grow Room - I still have bugs, don't get me wrong but even the old build that is available online is nearly mobile friendly
• Record history of all sensors and equipment- My current status with this is that it has been recording all stats since day one but I do not yet have charts to show these stats.
• Charts to show statistics etc.

To walk you through what I currently have for my own use going from the top screen to the bottom is as follows:-

Environment - this will basically show Spark line charts of the recent stats (but is clearly not finished) and if automated this will show real time stats otherwise it would show your last X updates to the forum in a chart.



Sensors, this page would be optional unless you have sensors that can feed back into the system. These can be simple sensors such as a BME280, DHT11, DHT22, doesn't matter as long as it communicates using serial or I2C protocols (I can look into ICAN but not supported as yet - because I have not hit the limit using RF as the main transmission protocol and I2C as the main incoming protocol). The water level sensors are very simple sensors (e.g. just connect two wires together to get a signal) but these are analog and use valuable resource pins on the hardware so I need to find a solution to these (which I think I do have but more on that later when we see about automated dosing and magnetic stirrers)



Levels / Ranges - these are your desired min and max levels for an optimum growroom environment - with automation these levels will trigger events based on either a high or low threshold - these levels will make more sense when we get to scheduling. Without Automation and using just simple forum updates these levels will trigger alerts in your charts or you history stats. etc. It is not all about the automation and more about the recording and analysis of the stats - the automation just allows you to not bother entering the stats. My plan is to support manual entry of everything to help the people that do not have automation or even any exact measurement. It will record what it is given and chart those with these levels being just a visual hint to yourself if you are on track or not.

I appreciate the actual ranges are way off, and stuff like that is exactly why I want other people invloved. What should the minimun PH value be hard coded to? I dunno? For me it would be 5.0 and no lower but the software is still in BETA and that is why it needs feedback from others.



Controls - these let you control all your hardware. Turn something on constantly, turn it off constantly, or let the schedule (more on that shortly) decide if it should be on or off.



Pumps - this section allows me to calibrate and control all the various pumps I use for recirculating, filling, draining, dosing, etc. These like the controls can be set to constatntly on, off, or controlled by the schedule with the added functionality of being able to dose a specific amount in .ml on demand if required.



Scheduling - This is very much still a work in progress but the plan is you drag out a period (hours, days, months, etc) and then decide which resource you want to control (light, pump, fan, etc) and select if that device is on/off or conditionally on or off. The conditional part is where the Sensors from above play a part in that we can say 'turn the extract fan on if the heat is high' - regardless off our other schedules. The events play in order but conditionals take precedence over all other events.









There are loads of different way to configure your schedule as this if of course important information and I wanted to make this as easy as possible so even Keeno can program this Timer ;o)



Been working on an agenda feature as well so I know what is important TODAY!



To be honest everything I have mentioned so far is Kinda a phase 2 for what you can use from that current software so I will post again shortly with the remaining two sections and where these fit into my plan for the GrowRoom420 side of things and to make it useful for everyone else who is not so willing to get into the automation side of things;

For those who are still interested in the automation side of things I still have plan for you lot and will come back to them after I have covered the basic bits ;o)

[Minty]

For the final sections I am going to list them in reverse order from bottom being the settings:-



This is just an information grab but the information will be used to automatically calculate if you have enough air flow for your current setup, how many watts you are pulling (based on schedule) or just on totals. That sort of thing. Going forward I think this could be expanded to include the sponsers tents, lights, etc so that if you have an invisible sun light or a Green Qube tent you would just pick the model rather than have to fill in all the details manually.

The the last from bottom is my Nutrient dosing function which basically consists of two tables and a total res size. you basically add nutrient rows to the bottom table and weeks are columns so you say how much per one litre of each the dosing should be and it will automatically calculate the total dosage required in the top table based on the total size of the res/bucket.

Double clicking a cell in the lower part will allow you to change the amount, or changing the res total size, these will both trigger the top table to recalculate the total dosing. This should work using the online demo but your changes will not be saved.



The last section I forgot about is the messages/notifications icon at the top right. This simply shows the last commands issued for those like me who would be paranoid to know if it worked:-



These are not just the command submitted from the browser, they are the command pinged back from the server when ever a change is made in any browser (currently doesn't track if you manually change the state from the actual appliance and not sure how I would manage that to be fair - so if in doubt issue an off before an on)

[Minty]

This functionality would actually be on top of what I wanted to do for the forums which is to provide all the useful charts people keep showing me in a central location but you can adjust the chart and it will save your modifications. For example if you disagreed with the following advice:-

Seedling: 600ppm even ratio of g/b/m
Early veg: 800-900ppm even ratio of g/b/m
Late veg early flower: 900-100ppm raise the grow a little to achieve the ppm increase.
Heavy flowering: 1000-1200ppm lower the g and raise th

you would simply change a value and next time you looked for this information it would be adjusted to your preferences.

I am not good at explaining shit so hopefully this will generate some questions and I can clarify further what the FUCK I AM TALKING ABOUT otherwise hopefully everyone is up for seeing how it would work?

[Minty]

I am still in the talking phase with Keeno to see if the data can be stored in the GrowRoom forums database but if not or even if it was preferred this information could just be stored in your local browser offline storage so nothing would be public. Interested to know what people think about the data side of things as I personally think to capture some data specific to us Canabis growers would be a real advantage but I obviously appreciate every ones privacy and there right to choose etc. On that note my software has always been open source and you can see my SkyRim Lightning Mod, My PC sensor monitoring software and my public URL is https://www.mintymods.info/ - I am not a commercial site, I do everything I do for free and for the fun and to help other (as grumpy as I may come across at first).

[Minty]

Now for some more on the automation front because I know at least a couple of you are interested in this side.

So what I have is an Arduino Leonardo with a Grove top hat providing an easy / solder less connection to all the GPIO/I2C pins. Off course I can solder but while prototyping I use these, but more importantly for people who do not want to solder or who do not own or want to own a soldering iron these Grove Top Hats are the bollox here is a picture off an Arduino Leonardo with a top hat and an Pro Micro 5V 16M Mini Leonardo with a top hat:-







They allow you to easily connect any sensor/servo/led/etc without using breadboard (another prototype favourite) but these can also be used for home made production(ish) level builds. There are various sensors you can get and also a smaller version of the Grove Shield for the Pro Micro which is a smaller and cheaper version of the Leonardo (although £3.47 for a Leonardo is average if buying one from China to be fair) but my point is there are alternatives.



The sensors are all available with the Grove type connector so this makes it all pretty much plug-and-pray ;o)

From memory, the sensors below are a TH02 Temp and humidity sensor, the RF433 sender and receiver (the receiver is only needed to learn a code from an existing device you may have and doesn't need to occupy an pin/address, then we have the new IR sender and receiver I will be using to control my new Air Conditioner for the tent that should be arriving shortly - I will make another post about this as it looks like a real cool - pun intended - way to cool a grow tent, perfect in my current plans, but until it arrives who can say)




All you do is plug the top hat 'on top of the Arduino' hence the name ;o) and put in your sensors:-



Eventually you will make something that looks like it will work ;o)

[Nanook]

Omg Your fairly going for it!
Following and i will read in more detail later. I have loads of equipment and planned similar myself but like everything, i lost interest/never got time.

[Minty]

Omg Your fairly going for it!
Following and i will read in more detail later. I have loads of equipment and planned similar myself but like everything, i lost interest/never got time.

Well, if I'm gonna get involved, I might as well take my pants off ;o)

[Minty]

Good idea if you're into that sort of thing, definitely not for me, way to much information overload. I don't do diaries on grow diaries for this reason to much info. I like to keep my growing simple here a pot here a plant now grow.

But as I said if your into that sort of thing, great. Just not for me good luck with it, I'm also pretty sure this tech exist? In one firm or another like the leafy grow box you can get?? Might be wrong and probably am

Thank you for the feedback Elijahgrowz. The whole point of the forum integration idea is that you do not have to use the automation or that side of things, there will also be just simple forms where you grow as you grow and just record what you like in the grids etc. You can call your nutrients X, C, and Q it doesn't matter. All the software will do it tell you how much of Q based on your total requirement. Most parts will be as simple as that and nothing technical about it other than it will remember what you entered last time (either on your local browser storage or in a central database). The idea is to make it easier for you while gathering stats that anyone wanting to contribute to can store and we can use these to see what works in terms of growing etc.

The Automation side was shown by me as this is what I have finished so far and for my own personal use. The forum side of things would be different software custom written specifically for the tasks we want, but it could include the automation for those that do chose to want to use this approach.

[Bulls]

That's incredibly. Fair play mate. I only just figured it out hot to tie my shoelaces

[Nanook]

Minty, after the prototype, you selling em? ;)