Total.Hydroponic.Control
Active Member
Apologies for the screen distortion, this is a simulation of the actual screen, when it was converted to JPeg it caused some distortion.
Hey man, nice bunch of expensive looking toys you got thereI'm all about automation, i always say i would rather man the machine then be it.
I'm most interested in the peristaltic pumps to dose nutrients into the reservoir, or more so how you intend to rig that up? I recently started a DIY to gravity dose my res, went with a liquid level controller and some solenoids only, whole thing cost me around $130 and i'm about done with it, here. How do you plan to have adjustability in the amount you dose? I couldn't figure out a convenient way with pumps, so i went with syringes in my build.
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I wish I had the money to purchase a standalone HMI and all the transmitters. I have a SLC504 (16ID, 16IA, 16OD, 16OA) setup sitting boxed up in a closet somewhere from when I was in college, I intend to use it for something someday, lol.
That said, I am doing something similar, but I am having to build everything myself to cut costs and will be using a microcontroller (AVR or PIC, haven't decided) or maybe something like the Raspberry Pi running linux, or both!
The way I have designed my setup is similar to yours, except my grow is a perpetual soil-less SoG, clone to flower. So I will have 6 separate containers (5 for flower, 1 for mother) that need to be independently monitored for pH, EC/TDS, and temperature, as well as 4 peristaltic pumps (pH up, pH down, Nutes, fresh water) per container. Then all the atmospheric monitoring and control, oi vey!
That said, you can get the peristaltic pumps off of eBay dirt cheap, that is including the head pump, a dc motor, and a mounting bracket. The ones I'm getting pH and nutes will be $20 each and have a dosing rate between 0.1mL/sec and 1mL/sec (+- 0.05mL), and since I will only be using 1 bottle of nutes, simply measuring EC/TDS will be enough for determining ppm.
Anyone used these transmitters?
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You may find them here
http://webpages.charter.net/tdsmeter/products.html
Hey guys. You should check out this product: www.robomatic.com . They are a new company that launched at the San Francisco 2012 Indoor Gardening expo. they have a networked capable EC/PH/TDS sensor. Two of them.. With microSD card logging and webserver. Basicly what you are trying to do.. They are a lot cheaper than building your own. Especially time invested at under $1000 for a three peristaltic pump system.
check it out
www.robomatic.com