Preparing my next build ;)

[superpedro]

Hi old friends!!

I ran into some trouble with my neighbors, and I'm not growing at the moment. Not all bad news, since we are looking to sell the apartment and get a farm instead
My IC activity has been very low, it is too frustrating to look at all those plants when you cant grow. But I miss ya

I'm preparing my next hydro rez. The strategy in this one, is to make a res with auto refill of RO to make up for water consumption (and thereby enable active evaporation cooling in conjunction with biofilter), and a timed fert injection( or perhaps run by an EC controller).

I use DIY nutes, and would like to adjust a lot of mixtures individually in order to change the NPK (ca. mg....) along the way.

Here is the prototype for the device:

It is a 7 channel air pressure driven dosage machine.

The box on the left is the compressor/vacuum machine. The pistons are pulled by a 12V dc motor I got from an old drill.
I use a relay to flip the polarity of the current, to make it travel one way or the other.

Here it is up and running.
I have installed breaker switches, to cut of the power at the limit of each direction. The relay is controlled by a timer. One direction @on and another @ off.

The air is pumped into the actuator part seen on the right side of the first picture. Those pistons are pulled by the air pressure.

Here it is with the pumps mounted:

The pumps suck up the exact amount adjusted by the bolts. There is a T-piece connected to each pump, and two directional valves to make it work.

A bad quality video from the test runs:


let me know what you think.

 

[StealthDragon]

holy cow man. ...way ahead of your time.

I look forward to all the awesome stuff you come up with. Nice to see ya back

 

[bonsai]

Great to see you back, I've really enjoyed your previous projects.

 

[ScrubNinja]

That's crazy man, i love it! Good to see you back! My device is too flaky to load the video so it's hard to understand what's going on but I'll try again later. It's certainly some top level tinkering, good sir.

 

[superpedro]

Thanks stealth&bonzai! Nice to be back, and I'm happy you like it.

That's crazy man, i love it! Good to see you back! My device is too flaky to load the video so it's hard to understand what's going on but I'll try again later. It's certainly some top level tinkering, good sir.

Hi Scrubs. Nice to see ya.
It looks way more advanced than it really is.

Since the video is shit - even if you could see it - perhaps a simple drawing of the pump system would help:

...

 

[ScrubNinja]

Hey cheers for the pic Pedro I sort of get it, but I don't understand the usage. Will it be hooked up eventually to some kind of EC meter so it knows when to activate the pumping? (continuous dosing)

Or is it simply enough to fill a particular res volume? ( to speed up mixing a res, for example)

I hope my questions make sense!

 

[superpedro]

Hey Scrubs.

Perhaps I'll hook it up to a EC monitor but I want to run it on a timer first.
I'm planning to grow hydro/aero in a greenhouse after i move, and keeping steady temperature and humidity is difficult - if not impossible.
This makes for a very unsteady water uptake, and would make a "normal" hydro system very difficult to control.
By separating water (using a level sensor, pump and RO rez) and nutrients the plants can use as much water as they like, without the EC climbing, and you only need to adjust your hourly feeding to the growth rate.

I don't want to use an EC monitor without some kind of data log. With a timer the EC value teaches me if they need more or less, and tell me something about when to change formula.

cheers

 

[heady blunts]

SP- really enjoyed your old thread. glad to have you back. hope you don't mind if i stick around for the show

 

[hazydreams]

SP- man i cant remember the last time i was really excited about a project in the micro section. This takes the cake man. Just stellar work. Welcome back and tack one more lurker on for the show. cant wait to see what this thing does while in action.

 

[superpedro]

heady-B, Thanks, you are very welcome
hazy-d, Thanks for the nice comments. I hope it wont be to long before I can start again!

This prototype is currently being tested on a reef-tank, the next one will be a little bit bigger, and made from acryl.
Perhaps I'll do some micro cab breeding in the future - but I hope to grow out of the micro section when I get a farm

Cheers

 

[jd4083]

Awesome. Just fantastic. Please keep us posted.

Couple q's if ya would:

1.) I take it the nuts/bolts spin freely to allow for adjustments -- are you at all worried that they might eventually tap themselves out of proper positioning after repeated use, or is that a non-issue? (seems like a non-issue anyways, but it's hard for me to tell anything with that video + my crappy computer screen)

2.) I know you're still in the "prototype" stages but do you think something like this could be scaled up with ease? It looks complicated as hell but I believe you when you say it really is quite simple -- because the mechanics of it appear to be.

3.) Sorry if you posted this, but how are you activating the air going into the pistons, just a basic solenoid assembly or what?

I'm a layman, so give me short and simple answers please keep it up dude, really awesome stuff

 

[superpedro]

Hey jd.

Thanks

1. The body holding the pumps, bolts etc. is made of PVC foam. I have nuts glued on the underside of the top for each pump. Every pump pushes quite hard on the limiter bolt.
I have used a small trick to make sure it won't crawl out of it's position, and made the bolt holes in the PVC 1mm too small. It makes them run a bit tight.

2. Oh yes! I haven't got a drawing yet to show - its still inside my head.

3. This is the relay I use:

A1,A2 Controls the relay by use of a timer.
11,21 This is where you connect the DC power supply for the motor.
12,22 connects to the motor, and so does 14,24 but you switch +/-.

Install a breaker button for each of the circuits, at the limits of each direction the compressor pump travels.

That is all - quite simple eh?.

Cheers.