Customizable cost wise quality Growroom controller (eventually for building yourself)

Growroom Design
#1

Hi guys,

the last days I was looking for a grow room controller which I could use for my purposes. I was really interested in using one with open source software because then I might have been able to fully customize it to my needs. Understanding the software part would be easy for me, as I studied computer science in university. Also I have an electrician at hand. I don’t want to develop the software from scratch, as this would be a waste of time, if there are already good projects. Also if the assembly of the hardware is not expensive, I would be willing to pay for it.

Most interesting I did find the projects:
growduino
growmat
yieldbuddy
raspiviv

I am tending towards growduino, as it seems to be the most professional one. Especially hardware wise it seems well crafted at a reasonable price.
I really wonder how many other projects are out there, which I missed while searching the net for them. I wonder if there are projects like that which are based on newer hardware platforms?
If you know any other projects, please feel free to write them here!

I also will describe you my setup, so maybe you can give me some advice, which grow room controller to choose:

Ok, I have two rooms. In total there are:

4x 700 Watt lamps

750 Watt dehumidifier

total 100 Watt by 3 small pumps

total 500 Watt in several fans

750 Watt bigger pump

total 600 Watt of mother plant light tubes

also maybe if it is too cold: electric heater with maybe 750 to 1000W

and finally I want to operate something between 4 to 8 solenoids, which regulate the water flow. If I will use 8 solenoids instead of 4, then 4 four inlet solenoids will be connected with 4 drain solenoids, which means that you can probably control them electrically together…

Counting this together would be 6500 Watt. My circuits are 16 amps and 1.5mm^2. I think I should use like 4 electric circuits.

Also it seems like, I would need a fair amount of electrical sockets… Is there any restriction in the amount of sockets with these systems?

Ok, for the sensors I would need the following:

temperature

humidity

CO2

Ph and EC

Maybe I want to have these sensors in each room. That would double the amount of sensors. Is there any restriction in the amount of sensors that I could use?

Then the features that I also would need:

Internet connectivity

optional camera… would it be possible to connect a camera for surveillance?

Finally, as I am based in Europe… it would also be interesting to see if there are sellers based in europe…

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#2

Best start with a pro

1 Like
#3

Which one? Please name some…

Also why do you suggest me to use a “pro” one?

So far I only did find controllers like Iponic Growroom controller… but they are nothing different and they seem expensive. Also it seems that they don’t support the amount of wattage that I need. And if I buy a closed system that I can’t adapt, I couldn’t even fix the wattage problem :smiley:

#4

Click on the green text near the top of the link.

Follow mr sparkle all around. Also look for roux

I was referring to mr sparkle and paying him a compliment. that is all.

#5

Oh ok. Thank you! I was thinking this is some kind of signature…

#6

I looked into the post… But I can’t figure out what arduino setup he exactly uses, specification wise. But I did write him a personal message. Maybe he will have a look into here.

Is there any possibility to follow a user?

#7

He is custom everything.

A walking talking resource. Roux is good too.

99%

1 Like
#8

If you click on a users avatar, you can have a look at their activity. If you fish around, you can find threads they have posted. This is a great resource. Learn to navigate it and reap the rewards. My grow has improved a bunch in the 3 months I have been haunting this site.

99%

1 Like
#9

For all the base stuff arduino and or raspberry pi will work, and the coding is really no different, and the sensors and parts that you can buy are typically able to be used on both.

But for the added internet connectivity and camera hook up go Rasberry Pi, as that’s typically included in base models now a days, you still will need a camera sensor to plug in but they are easy to find.

I look at it this way, Arduino’s are good for projects that you just need something done repeatedly over a long span of time. In yy case light control, water sensor readings and pumps controls. THey are also great for led projects such as clocks and or wearables, to say making a brew controller for beer making that will adjust temperatures and such over time while taking readings. They are easy and relatively simple and inexpensive to build.

Pi’s on the other hand can do all the same stuff with the same components but say if you wanted to run multiple things at once or want to be able to log your data and have spreadsheets made of it. Or say have your controller send you txt messages and internet connected video, then is easier to go with a pi as really it just a micro computer some with hdmi and keyboard hook ups so you could run a GUI for your control.

As for price they are more or less the same nowadays pi’s being a little more expensive but im talking dollars.

Myself i started off more on the end with the idea of having temp/humidity readings, with fan control, soil sensor reading with automatic watering, and light control. So just a step below also including pH and co2 measurements, which would be easy to add. But as of late i have found an advantage in building my systems simpler with smaller dedicated modules instead of including everything into one controller. So say i have one small controller just for light control, and a seperate one for watering based off a soil sensor, thats all i really need but thats me.

Now as for hook up and such, you will just have to have relays that will be able to handle your current which isn’t pretty common. Also you will just have to make sure you will have enough input/output ports to do what you want, and they add up quicker than you think.

7 Likes
#10

Thanks Mr Sparkle.

I can’t help this grower. I garden like Fred Flintstone.

But obviously, you can.

99%

2 Likes
#11

Hi Mr. Sparkle,

here 220 Volts is not uncommon. Is the current really a problem for the parts?

Actually how many relais are possible?

Is there maybe any project which you could recommend me?

I want to save me as much debugging as possible.

Did you write the code you use yourself?

So you advise to use Raspberry Pie, which means that the hardware that you use is Raspberry Pie 3?

What do you guess would the hardware costs be for a project like mine? I am a bit tempted to go with the growduino stuff, as it seems reliable and posses the important functions, but still I wonder how much I would save if I would built a solution myself…

1 Like
#12

With a 16 amp circuit and I’m guessing 220 volt over there in Europe you get a total of 3520 watts per circuit. Shooting for no more than an 80% load per circuit of total 6500 watts would give us a handicap of 1300w for a buffered total of 7800w. If you ran 3 individual circuits it could handle 10,560w with plenty of spare watts for whatever you may need to plug in.

This is based on your voltage being 220. If its lower (120v) then we will need more circuits to cover the wattage (minimum 4), but if the voltage is higher (240v) then 2 might be all you need.

Its hard to be sure what equipment is for what, but if you have 2 rooms I’m guessing one for flowering and the other for vegetation/nursery. (would be nice to know what is ran in each room)

I would tackle this with 4 circuits @ 16amp/220v each. 1 circuit controlling flower rooms’ lights, and 1 circuit for flower rooms’ dehum, pumps, fans, heater, etc. Then 1 circuit veg/nursery rooms’ lights, and 1 circuit for veg/nursery rooms’ pumps, fans, heater, etc.

I don’t write code for a living, I enjoy making a couple lines of code to get what I need done, but that’s about all the code I write now a days. Is it doable to setup a bunch of relays and sensors too run on your code, yes. But you might be asking for a headache (you change one thing and boom something else isn’t working). I would go the primitive/local approach to the whole system. As much as I like computers and dedicated most of my life to them, I don’t trust them, they will all fail eventually.

I would setup each room with their own controller board using 2 circuits per room. Using individual monitored controllers for lights, fans, pumps, CO2. Little bit of rework of existing controllers out there can be neatly laid out on rooms’ board and with use of a 3D printer, you can make your own customized layout and style for each individual rooms dependent of controller components.

Installing the PH and EC sensors should be easy enough as they are so many products on the market. The camera system is easy enough as running hard wire to the dvr isn’t too difficult.

Obviously this is a lots of hands on work, and no internet connectivity unless your individual controllers provide an interface via the web or an app.

Maybe the growduino or similar is a better option, and nice little end user package wrapped up with wifi, not a bad device. No wiring, No soldering, No cussing, just plug and play.

Good luck to you and hope all goes well for you!

10 Likes
#13

@SamandMax Hey sorry only kinda half answered the question and was pulled away without me finishing, plus only really answered part of the first question, so ignore the above post for now.

Like @roux im gonna have to guess here without knowing what you want to do in a bit more detail.

So circuitry, and “possible” key word here pre-done solutions aside my first question should’ve asked is what do you want to control and more specifically how?

As that dictates how things would need to be wired and controlled, and what equipment you would need to control things and whether or not certain solutions are the best/logical/cheapest options for your application. As there really isn’t any plug and play options out there currently in my opinion.

We can start here and work our way through it.

2 Likes
#14

Ok. Thank you very much for your answers and sorry for coming back a bit late.

So my voltage is indeed 220 and usually I have the 16 amps breakers. So your calculations are good @Roux roux. 4 circuits I was aiming too.

So @Mr.Sparkle, to shed a bit more light into what I want to do:

I have two rooms, almost the same size(one is a bit smaller), side by side. In the bigger room, I will have four 4x4 ebb and flow tables with rockwool for something between 100 and 150 plants (am not exactly sure about a recommendable amount of plants in that setup). This room is for flowering. The other room will be for motherplants, clones and drying harvest. Actually it will be a system for probably harvesting every two months.

These two rooms will be connected at probably two points which will let circulate the air between them. Probably the whole thing will be a sealed room with AC. Now in winter I have not yet the need for an AC unit. In summer I will install a mini split for cooling (or if not, I will sort out some good compromise with ventilation and use of CO2…)

As these two rooms are connected, I will only need the CO2 generator and the dehumidifier once.

Because the two rooms are connected, I was aiming to control the two rooms centrally by one controller.

Counting together the different devices which I will have, i might run into 15 or more electrical sockets.

Here a quick list of the devices that I will run:

4x 750W lamp
8x solenoids
1x pump co2 generator (propane co2 generator is activated by water pump)
1x pump for pumping nutrients to tables
1x pump for flooming the nutrient reservoir
1x pump for returning nutrients into the reservoir
1x dehumidifier
1x electrical heater
1x mother plant lights
1x heated humidity dome with own lights

  • several fans for circulating air inside the room and two fans for circulating air between the rooms

Later i need to add: mini split or air inlet and exhaust solution for climate control in summer

Interesting to note might be, that I will have to use a system of probably 8 solenoids for the four ebb and flow tables for filling and draining them sequentially. I will use a 100 gallon barrell, and I would prefer to fill the tables sequentially, as I am not sure if that amount of nutrients will be enough to flood the four tables all at once, especially if the plants are bigger and consume more water. In my thinking the different solenoids will be timed by the controller. So with the pump running,one inlet solenoid will open, at the same time a draining solenoid will close. Same thing with the other tables. I need a draining solenoid, as I can’t use gravity to drain the nutrients back into the rain barell (because the tables are lower than the reservoir). I need to drain it back into a small reservoir under the tables and a pump activated by a water senosr will pump it back into the reservoir. (Sure there migh fail some device which could mess stuff up, but it doesn’t seem too difficult to build in some redundancy and some kind of failsafe switches. Also I guess it wouldn’t be too difficult to connect them with the controller and send some alarm over the internet, which would make possible a fast reaction). For 8 solenoids I would need 4 independently controllable electric sockets. Inlet and draining solenoid would be switched together.

I am versatile in computer science, so I know, that if you put enough effort in coding a solution you get a more trustable system. But I also know, that would mean first running into bugs and then debugging. That is why I would prefer to go with a solution, which already has a lot of debugging done and maybe a community behind it.

What do you guess would cost such a controlling system hardware wise?

I also tried to contact the growduino guys, as they seem to build bigger customized solutions (See the main unit special http://growduino.eu/home/main-unit.html). What do you think about their pricing http://growduino.eu/eshop.html) Unfortunately I got no response yet. Do you know if the are still active? I did find a thread about that they were changing the hardware platform to OrangePi. Does anybody know something about that?

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#15

Pictures would help of the room, current layout will play a part. Were is the 15 outlets you need in the space your wiring? HVAC systems is an option. Septic is another option. How big of rooms we talking. Are you currently building them?

How deep is your pocket, you could spends thousands of dollars maybe even in the ten thousands. How much automation and security do you need? Whats it worth to you?

1 Like
#16

defintely agree here.

@SamandMax at what your looking to do your gonna need a full custom setup, the garduino stuff which is marked up about 5+ times wont even support what you want to do control wise. But we can help simplify it a bit.

As @roux suggested perviously i also would split the two rooms into having their own controllers or at least certain functions in your grow dedicated to their own, such as lights vs watering.

Let’s start with the stuff you don’t need to control with a controller or can be done separately with other means. First the dehumidifier, typically they have their own built in control so having that run off a controller is redundant unless wanting to run some custom humidity profile that is modulated automatically over a set time span. Your heater and AC the same thing as well they will have their own independent control which can easily be made to work for your rooms, again barring that your not wanting to run some custom profile.

The lights so long as they stay with in amperage limits of your circuits you will be able to run multiple lights off one connection, so say for light control you would only need to use one “connection” vs say 4 to control your lights, unless you want them individually controlled. Also there are plenty of decently priced standard timers out there that will cover the lighting control by themselves, which by having separate timers actually increases the “survivability” of your grow instead of having everything rely on one controller which if it fails kills everything.

Which pretty much brings up down to just water control, if the above is done separately. In order to run 8 solenoids, and 3 pumps, plus the co2, you would need to have a controller that can handle 12 outputs, 11 if you tie the co2 to the same control as the water pump that you want to trigger it.

But again some of those could be done separately such as the return pump can just be tied to a float switch bypassing control on that. The flooming pump could run on a short based timer as well.

Which brings us really down to the solenoids and the main feed pump. Now your saying that you want to run them in sequence due to you res volume, one way we can further reduce your control is by tying the outtake solenoid on one table to the intake solenoid on another, so that when one table starts to fill the previous one drains, doing that you can reduce you outputs to about 6, one for the pump, one for the intake for the first table, 3 for intake/outake combos, and one for the final outtake. Which is pretty easy to do.

As for alarms again depends on what you want to be notified for, but consider each alarm will need to be an input to your controller

So kinda the reason i was asking what do you want to control and how, as that will dictate what you actually will need.

Also i will say going with timers for the lights instead of a “pre done” controller will probably be cheaper overall when comparing to garduino prices, and they are easier to replace if something goes wrong.

4 Likes
#17

So elegantly put sir. I might steal you @Mr.Sparkle and put you in my pocket :yum: I like the way you think! Great minds and all that junk

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#18

If you really need 20 outputs and multiple inputs you really need a full PLC.

Reading Mr Sparkles reply saved me the time of writing the same thing out, most of what you want to control already has a control and would be redundant.

Most of the water setup could be run off relays and float switches although the wiring would look like the insides of a pin ball machine. The raspberry pi for running a log (Temps, humidity, and medium moisture levels) is a great idea to help dial a large setup like that one in.

Great responses so far guy.

2 Likes
#19

@50State Please tell me why I need a full PLC? Actually what is that and what is the difference between an arduino and a PLC? I am asking because I don’t know yet :wink:

@roux I am building the rooms at the moment. I build them with drywall in a bigger room. It is two rectangle rooms side by side at their longer side. The bigger room is around 5,50m x 2m. The other one is a bit more slim. Height is 2,60m. Do you think a drawing or photos would be good?

I will spend what is necessary to get job properly and reliable done. But I don’t want to spend more. Ok I will not invest now in redrilling the source so the place has its own water source. I might do that later.

What is septic? And what is hvac? Is that something like a minisplit which can heat also?

Ok… lets go further with following the suggestion of @Mr.Sparkle and reduce the complexity of the controller.

So the water control for the solenoids 6 to 9 outputs.
Then the co2 pump 1 output.
For the dehumidifier I am still unsure, as I did read that if this model doesn’t run on a timer, it will waste too much electricity. So maybe running it on a controller with a custom setting isn’t a bad idea.

As for sensors I would need:
co2 (so it will start the pump which will start the Co2 generator)
temperature/humidity (would be nice to have a graph to see how stable values are, same for CO2)
ph,ec

As an alarm:
co2, temperature, humidity, ph,ec

Then there is the question how I will make that solenoid system safe. If there is malfunction I don’t want a table to stay filled with water. As I guess this will kill plants pretty fast and flood my setup in the next filling circle. Also if an inlet solenoid isn’t working anymore, I can’t have my pump run against it. So I need to build in some safety.

I am wondering if there is a direct possibility to measure if a solenoid is working? So in case a solenoid doesn’t work, I will get noticed and the table will be left out, or a redundant solenoid will be activated. But, I guess, direct measuring if a solenoid is working, isn’t realistic…

Maybe there is some kind of pressure switch, which will turn of the pump if the pressure gets too high.

Also I might be able to work with some kind of humidity sensors, which would notify me if there is something unusual happening, like the medium is too long too wet.

What do you think?

Now I am actually wondering what size of reservoir would I need so I could fill the tables all at once without any solenoids? Maybe it is possible to reduce the system even more :smiley:

And @Mr.Sparkle you said growduino doesn’t support some functions that I need, which ones do you mean?

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#20

A full on PLC or Programable Logic Controller is an industrial controller and used in industrial automation.

The difference between an audrino and a plc is one is cheap with various shields to control a limited number of inputs and output. The other costs thousands of dollars, made by Allen Bradley or Siemens, is expandable and can control as many inputs and outputs as you can afford, and can handle vision systems and countless other inputs that an audrino can’t.

Also a dehumidifier only runs when the humidity gets above the preset limit and will not run all day or need a timer. It too would be redundant when you install A/C since an air conditioner has to remove the humidity (on the a-coil or evaporator) before it can cool the air.

I think you’ll need more inputs for your system. You completely missed low and high water alarms and flood sensors.

You don’t want low water/no water in the res with the pumps running and burning them out. You don’t want a plugged drain/bad solenoid (not opening on drain or closing on fill) causing a table to overflow on the floor and just keeps cycling till the res is empty (bigger problem if the res self fills) or burning out the pumps and flooding the house. A floor drain won’t be a bad idea either.

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