Drying and Curing: Design

Hi,

I wonder if somebody would be able to help me, I'm interested in setting up an excellent try in curing process.

I've been doing some research into this topic and it seems there are various opinions on what is the best process. Some people are suggesting drying completely and then curing in glass jars. some are suggesting letting dry for a while and then putting a jar or her bag then let him try again and repeat this for a while. There are huge amounts of different opinions out there. I'm looking for the optimal process if one exists.

I'm interested in creating some sort of chamber to create the perfect conditions for each of these processes. This is because I want automated as much as possible much like my growing rooms are automated. this is because I try and stay away from the room as much as possible.

I'm proposing to create chamber with humidity, temperature, and whatever other environmental metres and necessary. Using these metres to feed back into my computer which will then operate fans, extractors, humidifiers, etc to create the optimal environment for the stage of drying or curing. this will mean the ones of the buds into the chamber the computer will take care of it and I will not return as regularly.

Is anyone aware of data that I could use to set up my chamber process? As the cliche goes on all websites that give advice on the drying and curing process "you'd spend time getting this far now you better make sure that you get right"

tanks a lot

I am currently drying in glass jars after drying almost all the way and I have been wondering about the process as well if not just to figure out what if anything I can make sure I do during curing time, so I am interested and signed up for the ride.

No ideas anyone?

hyperq said:

No ideas anyone?

Click to expand...

total bummer

Hi Ya Hyper

Welcome to RiU

Sounds like an interesting concept , Fully automated , Computer controlled drying station .. i love stuff like this

I would start by finding monitors that can be fitted to a room ( box ) to check temps and humidity that can be linked to a computer , I found a system a while back that does it ... but not sure if it just monitored the enviroment or actualy regulataed it to .

http://www.isatec.co.uk/icespy/?gclid=CPLf9dm1uKICFQRd4wodmiDR5Q

You might be trying to re-invent the wheel a bit here ... But by that i don't mean you shouldnt try ... I think somehting like this would be of value ( use ) to people who need to monitor progress from an offsite location .

If you can ... Try and keep this thread updated to let us see your progress and what you come up with ... i will subscribe to this thread and bring back anything i find that i think might help


V

Hey Vento,

thanks for your response and hope you had a good weekend and wherever you are in the world hope it's not raining like it is here

That link you sent it looks good but I hate websites that give you general information about the product and then ask you to contact for more details.

I currently operate three rooms: one for vegetation, one for flowering, and a small one for housing various mother plants.

all these three rooms are connected to a central computerthat monitors environmental conditions in each room and institutes appropriate action to correct discrepancies in the environment.

For example the vegetative room set up as follows:

It is relatively airtight

there is an input fan but when not in use is covered by motorised damper that is also connected to a HEPA filter
there is an exhaust fan but when it does not useis covered by motoris damper
the lights are on rails and plants are in flood and drain buckets.
There is CO2 injection so in order to reduce the waste by exhausting it out of the room there is a fan that pumps the air through water cooled heat exchanger.

Then there are the following sensors:

1 humidity
2 temperature: 1 canopy level and 1 beside the input fan
1 CO2 sensor
1 flood detection sensor
1 door opening detection sensor
1 Fire detection sensor
1 soil moisture detection sensor

All of these feedback to the computer which will then use the calculations I've inputted to take action to correct the environmental factor.

If it detects the humidity is out of the range I had set it will turn on dehumidifier or fogger.

If it detects the temperature is out of range it will turn on the heater or if it was too hot turn on the water cooler heat exchanger and if this is already on it will activate the input and output fans and also open the dampers.

if the CO2 was out of range it will release more but only if the lights are on, and not if the lights are to be turned off in the next half an hour. If there is too much CO2 in the room it will turn off the CO2 injection and also if it is above a higher threshold it will activate the input and output fans until the correct level is achieved.

if it detects a flood then water pumps are stopped and text messages sent to me

if it detects a fire it triggers fire suppression device, turns the CO2 maximum, and stops the input and exhaust fan. Text messages also sent to me

If the door is opened unexpectedly all the lights are turned off, a strobe light is activated and the flight of the Valkyrie is played very loudly (this is just for fun), and text messages sent to me

one soil moisture sensor is placed in a pot and when the moisture gets below a certain level the flood is activated. The beauty of this is it responds to the plants as they grow so the bigger the plant is the faster the moisture is reduced and the sooner the flood happens again.

The flood reservoir is the same reservoir for all three rooms but here is the Genius part. The reservoir has three sensors pH, EC/TDS, and temperature. Each room has its own settings for what the pH, dissolved solids, and temperature should be. So before the computer activates the pump for the flood for a particular room it assesses the water in the reservoir and activates peristaltic pumps for the particular room's nutrient mix and when it is achieved they are deactivated. A computer we'll then correct the pH using peristaltic pumps. finally the temperature is increased or decreased using coolers and heaters. Then the correct flood pump is activated.

As the water is being pulled back to the reservoir the 3 sensors take an average of the return water so that I know generally what the plants absorbed.

Because the three rooms share a single reservoir but the three rooms require different nutrients if the water returned to the reservoir is not to be pumped into the same room at the next flood cycle it is pumped through a reverse osmosis machine to remove the nutrients (I do this rather than disgarding the water and using new water because it is more environmentally friendly) then back into the reservoir as freshwater. Then the computer will go about adding the required nutrients for the next flooding.

The water level in the reservoir is maintained by float sensors.

so now what I want to do is add another room to the system. I don't imagine it to be a room like the others more of the chamber that will have humidity and temperature control and any other climate factors that should be considered. My hope is that I can add my buds to the chamber then the computer will monitor the drying and curing process. I just need to know what it perfect environmental conditions and procedure for doing this.

Any help would be great.

So is this a program that you have written for controlling this setup? Or is there a link so other people can get a copy of the program?

Hi,

No I didn't write it myself. I used the sensors and software from http://growtronix.com. It would be great if there were people out there that could create some open source version of this.

Lol funny. I just found their website and was checking it out. Was hopping for a link to download the software so I could check it out.