Diary Killing it with Urban Legends Cookies, Mandarine & Sour Cheese (auto) under MH FC3000

[Chevy cHaze]

Looking good and I hear you on the two way communication.
I'm doing my threads anyways, almost like a meditaive thing but it's a lot more fun if someone chimes in!

Can you again tell me what's the difference between the values in mBar you are using and what I'm seeing in most VPD charts, kPa? Is is just a conversion or something else?
Cheers Amigo!
CC

 

[exploziv]

Hello brother!!
Good to hear at least someone is understanding me. Makes me feel a bit less crazy muahhahah!
Anyway, kpa to mbar is:

.. so because I don't like seeing so many o
0."something" values on my controller and because I am more used to work with mBars..
we are using mBars and not kPa.
Every time you see a zero.something-something-othersomething in a kPa VPD chart, take out the "0.", then the first 2 digits are what you would see in mBars, with a point before the othersomething that gets to be a decimal.
Also, be aware that many of those charts are badly calculated or drawn, or just too small to lack enaugh definition to correctly display the good vpd range, so you would see places where a vpd is acceptable at a temp, while at other temp its presented as out of range. On some you would even see values taken out of thin air, by mistake or whatever.
The controller basically is programed mathematically, so it works smoother that someone that would read any of those vpd charts and try to apply them manually.
Btw,one of the next improvement after I get to final working protothype is adding some smart "learn as you go" algorithm for it, where by looking behind some hours and some days into what worked better or not, controller will be able to time the control period for the fans, humidifier and (soon to be added) heater function better for more stable on the fly control of the environment. Kinda like a smart home would learn to keep your house heated as you want, by looking at when it failed to meet or overshoot the conditions that were demanded. That means that even if you set it badly, and it fails to meet a stable environment at first.. it will learn to slowly corect that by sometimes anticipating needs and sometimes not reacting as fast as its programmed by default, knowing the usual daily vpd cycle will help it work in that direction anyway.
This will also add more energy efficiency to it, since will lead to less pointless battles between humidifer and vent, or heater and vent.. even if you set it in a way that may demand they both work in succesion in the same timeframe (too aggressive control). So end result will be smoother environment instead of very weird swings and variations, all while using less power and much less pointless work time of the controlled gadgets.
Thank you for the visit and the nice talk, bro. I will check your thread soon as well. I do it from time to tine but i must admit sometimes I am too high to post.. So I kinds understand the silence in here when I am the only one posting for days. But I am not as keen on this kind of meditation as you seem to be. Cheers, man!

 

[Chevy cHaze]

Yeah we do what we do!
But don't get me wrong I'm not keen on it, but I will keep posting anyways ;-)
Thanks for the explanation, that makes a lot of sense and I got it now.
What you are doing with the controller is outta sight, I tried to do it with bought gagdgets and sensors and it was not very good I have to say, so will follow your journey closely and needless to say you got me interested in all that tech stuff by now! It makes a lot of sense to set a value and then have the gadgets maintain it eather than set individual values for all gadgets aiming to create a certain VPD value as I was trying to.
Thanks!
CC

 

[exploziv]

Thank you bro! Will post more once I finish more of the work on it..

 

[gizmo666]

boot camp time for the ladies lol
looking good exploziv

 

[Sampas92]

Sup explosive, the girls got a huge jump in just a few days

I saw that since you pluged the controller the temps are higher, what do you use to heat?oil heater?those kinda coil things? You heat the room where the grow is i supose?

great job bro, always like to read your threads even if i dont say anything and sure there are others like me, but we learn with you.
Who knows if we watch the birth of a successfull brand of controllers

Peace

 

[exploziv]

boot camp time for the ladies lol
looking good exploziv

Hello again, gizmo666 !
You're right, we reached that part of the grow where the plants need to be shown who's the boss! By looking at how much they grown since yesterday.. looks like I'll be busy staying ahead of them..
Thank you for the visit and nice words, man!

 

[exploziv]

Sampas92 The controller doesnt control heating directly yet. But I will add that function soon, maybe even today. For now, the controller is making best use of the conditions in my (heated) garage, which are 21-24 C when I am there working, and 18-20 at night.
I am heating the garage cause I am working and storing things there, not for the grow, if I was to efficiently heat just the grow I would have made a small cardboard/gipsboard lungroom which I would heat with an oil heater or heatpad controlled by the mintemp and vpd set in the controller. Or just put something inside the tent/room for heat if I had the space. I guess a heatpad would be best for tents. I would never use those red glowing coils you talk about or something similar.. cause there is a big risk of fire.
For now the grow manages to keep temps and vpd just by controlling the exhaust fan the humidifier doesnt even needed, as they started to put enaugh hunidity into the air.
I guess I will also have to add a setting and solenoid for dehumidifier, too.. which I don't use, but I bet others use them and would love to have them working just when needed.
Then, with controlled vents, humidifier, dehimidofier and heating you could really have 2 options of rising vpd and 2 options of lowering it.
Last problem, but the one that will probably need the most weed smoked to be figured out, is how to simplify setting this up so even a stoned stoner could do it following simple instructions.
Thank you for coming around.
As about great controllers.. dunno, once I finish and test this I will try to make it available to people that are interested. Maybe if there is really a need I can really develop a commercial version out of it.
But this is worth it even if all the work was just for me to have one. By now this is the 3rd or 4th model I have made and used and I learned a lot. Also had fun!
Hope I manage to keep the ladies feed till the end so I get best results out of this, and put a great show till the end, I honestly think that is the single problem I can have this grow.

 

[exploziv]

Pics! Pics! Pics!

They been watered with half a dose regular fert and half a dose cal mag booster. Then sprayed with seaweed extract.
Can anyone help me judge if the burnt tips we see in the lower leaves is from the period they had the deffs earlier in their life or maybe something new that is showing?
See you soon!

 

[exploziv]

Some showing Fe deffs again, so I used the foliar with lots of fe and other micro again. Will also check soil PH at next watering.

 

[exploziv]

Data, 45 mins after lights off, with 1 hour average shown. Here you kinda see what variation happens between day/night cycle.

 

[aliceklar]

Sampas92 ...
Then, with controlled vents, humidifier, dehimidofier and heating you could really have 2 options of rising vpd and 2 options of lowering it.
Last problem, but the one that will probably need the most weed smoked to be figured out, is how to simplify setting this up so even a stoned stoner could do it following simple instructions.

Have three buttons - one labelled "seedling", one labelled "veg", and one labelled "flower" - then work out optimum balanced settings for each.

 

[exploziv]

aliceklar Thank you for coming by! And also, your sugestion is very close to the actual solution I have planned but not yet implemented.
For the sake of simplicity, the controller only has a rotating button (continously registering left or right choices without end stops in any direction) that can be also short pushed or long pushed (over 1.5 seconds continously). By using this navigational rotary encoder, you can go through a lot of screens that display data and a lot of menus and submenus. The vpd menu will have those seedling veg and flower settings that will auto set the vpd values. But the control options on the devices goes much further than that. They can be set to work only in intervals (when needed) so you have total control over how fast a change happens. Like if your heater is too powerful to work continously, and keeping it on all the time on would overshoot control point, you can always select how much it will work on and how often, but then you could also leave the controller handle this as well. Everything is thinked about from a viewpoint where energy eficiency and having as much control over your environment as you wish if very important.
Once I finish adding all the functions, I will probably think about menu again, and try to group all simple settings into a quick menu, and all the extensive ones will be put further down the menu. Just for those that want to do aditional tweaks.
In case fuckups happen a global reset is posible, so you start fresh from default options.

 

[exploziv]

Small update:

They growing good, but some started to show what I think are iron deficiency again and some maybe show a start of mg def. I did sprayed them with a foliar containing 230 mg Fe and 550 mg Mg some days ago and that is maybe what gave them the boost in growth, but I need to fix the soil issues till flower starts. Cause foliar feeds won't be a option anymore.
After I took the pic, I watered them with 1 liter of ph 6 water each, and I got 4 liters of runoff at around PH 7. That makes me belive ph in the soil is just above 7 at this moment, which is not perfect, but not bad enaugh to explain the problems.
Looking into this more, I checked TDS and.. by watering 130 ppm in I got a whooping
2300 out. I suspect that might be the Ca buffer they put into the soilless mix leaking out. Cause I didn't watered enaugh nutes in to get that much ppm out. Unless... the soiless mix was loaded with that much nutes from the get go. Judging this situation is above my experience, all I know is that from now on I will dilute my feeds even more, in hopes of lowering that runoff ppm in the future while also keeping plants happy. Also, every 2-3 waterings I will do a watering with lots of runoff, like today, and will continue to monitor runoff ph and ppm, see if I can fix it or make anything useful out of the info I gather.
P.s.: Controller was just reset for update that is why average data line is not yey populated.
See you guys and gals soon with more info! Thank you for watching! Please continue to come in with opinions, hints, questions, sugestions or whatever you feel like posting.

 

[JustGrowing420]

If your runoff is 7 with 6 in, maybe ph is even higher than slightly above 7? like 7.5 to 8? that could explain the iron lockout as it need a lower ph to be available.

 

[exploziv]

Sure.. that's possible, and that would mean next time I'll do PH water with 5.5 PH trying to lower it even more. I don't get tho how a soiless mix that is buffered to 6.4 and fed with no more than 7.3 ever (before I started to ph the water) gets to 8+. Maybe the shitty PH buffer plays games with me? Anyway.. at least I know I need to feed less and ph more, while using foliars to mantain proper levels into the plants while I fix the soil. Other than that, I guess wait and see whats happening next.
Thank you for the visit and info, JustGrowing420 !

 

[exploziv]

Update at about 3.5 weeks since breaking ground.
The second wave of Fe deffs has passed and new growth is now lush green again thanks to 2 foliar aplications. Meanwhile, plants have drinked all the water from last ph'ing flush, and I was able to do another one today.
I put in 390 ppm total of regular feed and PK boost @ just under PH 6 (around 5.8) and got out 1750 ppm at ph just a bit over 6.5.
This makes me think soil should be in the proper range now, so I will continue to feed with ph'ed water and low ppm and see if they can go without more foliar feeds.
I know some of the leaves look bad, but actually I seen this early and fixed it with the foliar as soon as I seen it, so the leaves you see that are spotted are just that initial node that grew and leaves never recovered. But healthy new growth was seen starting a few days after the spray so I think for now they have the necesary Fe for a while. I just need to make sure they can get all their nuted from soil, cause soon buds will form and I won't be able to use sprays anymore.
PICS:

Here you can see average for past 30 mins before opening the tent and the live reading just after opening it. Keeping the tent closed really helps with humidity and VPD!

See you guys soon!

 

[gizmo666]

Looking good exploziv

 

[exploziv]

Thank you mate, hopefully we are heading just for better from this point on. Anyway, despite the Fe and slight Mg deffs they had/have, the growth is crazy. And since I just sprayed them again after watering, they should have another boost in growth over the next few days.
Also forgot to say they been through another tie-down session and a slight defoliation of the underside leaves yesterday. And they already filling and leveling the canopy.

 

[exploziv]

They growing nice, with big leaves and stems, recovering from problems (as you can see by the new growth) and already showing some signs of stretch.
I did not picture or checked the VPD controller this morning (I was fast checking them on my way to the bubble hash tray with coffee in hand already, so no time for that I guess hahaha), but I can pretty much guess they are around 21C and 65 to 70% RH. Cause I learned the VPD daily cycle already..


See you guys and gals soon. Don't forget to come in and say hi, or whatever you feel like posting. Hell, you could even tell us a joke. I just don't like to see more updates than comments from friends.
Peace, Pot and Love!