Got tired of waiting for my immersible pump to build an auto feeding system so I went to HD And bought a pond pump this morning… Guess what came in the mail today. Well the pump I got, doesn’t move a lot of liquid so I have some thinking to do but my brain is shot for today so something in the next couple days. It is trickling my nute mixture so I’ll let it run for now. I was hoping to have enough flow to turn the thing on several times per day and then let it dry somewhat between feedings. My coco chip medium in my bucket drains really well and quickly.
Well, the little 12v pumps I got work great so the bucket is on auto… I’m just using a sonoff as a timer for now and feeding three times a day for 1/2 hour.
So I guess being born on the 2nd of Jan, put the little girl at 11days. A shot of my feeder hose. Hopefully she’ll like getting fed more often and more regular. Also I’m hopeful to get more enthusiastic about the cabinet remodel but it’s been kinda rainy and I been kinda lazy. That may or may not continue…
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Those space buckets always looked fun to me. 
if its rainy out its the best time to get started on the remodel, hardest part is always starting.
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I’d love to get started and I will but the wifeys been on a tear lately doing spring cleaning and of course it’s not just her doing the cleaning…I’m not starting my project until I know I have the time to finish.
Gotta keep the lady happy. Something i been needing to do as well, consolidation and reduction of things makes the mind feel fresh and unburdened for new tasks, well to some, i’m one of those types as well.
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The last few days when I could sneak away from my wife house cleaning obsession, I have been reworking my bucket lid. It’s almost done, I just have to connect the feeding pump to the second sonoff switch and program it. But it’s taking shape at least. The green parts were printed on my 3d printer.
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Look, its simple. Just tell her you are building a new vacuum cleaner.
She won’t know the difference.
Only, that doesn’t suck, lol.
99%
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Looks great, gotta build me one, hope the auto water works out for ya
All done, I think… the water/feeding happens every 5 hours, total 4 times per day only during lights on time. Each time it comes on for a half hour. The rez is the black bucket and while the pump is running it feeds the top of the coco and then drains back into the black bucket. I’ll monitor the ph, ppm and level and replace as needed. I still plan on doing some stuff with the arduino but I thought this a simple way to get it going for now. The sonoff switches can be toggled thru WiFi but they also function as multi set timer schedulers.
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if i had a printer, i would so be making intake ports, and parts holders and such. What are you running for a printer ?
It’s a cheap Chinese kit called Anet A-8… not sure I’d recommend it but you are a tinkerer so it may be a good match for you. I put it together and started printing parts to make it work better. I ended up replacing several parts just to make it safer as it seems there have been a number of fires associated with it. For a tinkerer builder such as yourself, there is quite a lot of info to guide you thru building one from scratch. If your interested start here reprap.org
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Day 16 in the bucket, Polar Express Auto on MegaCrop. I’m a little surprised by how short and squat she is but since this is a bucket grow with little space, I guess that’s a good thing…
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Most auto’s are slow to start, if under enough light which you have plenty they just squat down till about week3 then start going.
But just encase, how much water are you running through on average, and whats the temp like for the mix, and what are you getting ppm wise from some runoff.
Reason i ask is from my mini bucket tester, i noticed with fabric pots if my side vents were too low and i had a high airflow/turn over rate. Like the bucket fan not having a carbon filter to restrict the airflow. It was increasing the evaporation through my media due to the higher airflow and vent placement in regards to the pot. It caused my ppm to increase in media because the water was being evaporated away faster than the plant could knock back the concentration, and that it was cooling the rootzone greater than ambient due to basically being a mini evaporation cooler.
With it being winter here for myself those would be the first places id check if i was thinking i was having an issue. Solution would just be to restrict or reduce the airflow a bit.
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I’m not really sure how much water/feed gets run through as I am just pumping it to the top and letting it drip back down into my reservoir. I have the pump on 4 times per day for 1/2 hour each time and I get flow thru after about 30 seconds, it seems like I get good saturation of the coco chips. This last res change I used 5 grams of MegaCrop in 2 gallons of tap water and got a ppm of about 450, my tap is about 37ppm. Lots of things I could be check I guess like the ppm when I dump and volume when I dump. I’ll try to pay more attention to those things next time. See how much eveaporation I’m getting. The ambient in the bucket stays around 75 while the lights and fan are on but I’m sure that drops somewhat when the lights are out.
The plant still looks good though ;), we will see in a week if it starts to take off.
Actually it has put on quite a bit of growth just not height, which I guess is ok in the small spacebucket…
I have a question about the sonoff switches - is there a website that gives info on programming, re-flashing, etc?
The Sonof website has basically zero info.
What I want to do is switch a pump ON for 1 minute then off for 15, then repeat 24 hrs a day. Can it do that out of the box or would it need re-flashing or complex programming?
Thanks!
With the stock firmware you have only 8 events that you can schedule. Not sure about flashing but there are a number of YouTube’s about flashing…