Comments on: Fully automated computerized grow box (Project Everbearing) Beta 1

By: Automated plant growing « MM3 Group 6 – "Product for Vegtable gardners

Fri, 19 Feb 2010 10:12:01 +0000

[...] Cheap Vegetable Gardener sent us his fully automated grow chamber project. In the quest to have fresh strawberries year round, they’ve made some progress in the area of [...]

By: The Cheap Vegetable Gardener

The Cheap Vegetable Gardener — Thu, 07 Jan 2010 02:05:32 +0000

Yeah the 90 or so watts the computer uses is a but of a power waster though I like the cool graphics and data logging. I have thought about making a web based solution with arduino only though I agree 32KB could get used up pretty quickly.

As for CO2, sugar and yeast or vinegar and baking soda are defiantely options but sure if you do the math in the long run getting tanks is probably much easier in the long run. Have also though about using CO2 to regulate pH in hydroponics while also giving the plants a little boost. Maybe when I retire and don’t know what to do with my free time and free money

By: Any computer programs to help monitor cannabis plants? - Grasscity.com Forums

Any computer programs to help monitor cannabis plants? - Grasscity.com Forums — Thu, 07 Jan 2010 00:43:43 +0000

[...] [...]

By: Shran

Shran — Wed, 06 Jan 2010 20:32:49 +0000

Nice project !

ROI of CO2 ?
You could grow grapes and make wine

I’ve not automated my growbox that far yet, but it actually is pretty cheap to get CO2 & wine from sugar & yeast. It’s a bit tricky at first to get a constant flow of CO2, but hey, you could see it as another variable to monitor & control

I also wanted to use a PC to control my room, but I guess it’s going to consume more energy as the room itself

So, I hope to get the job done with an Arduino. It probably will be tricky to be confined to 32KB programming-space & 2KB of RAM while being used to lots&lots more.

But the prospect of discovering I2C, SPI, and lots of other techniques sounds very appealing.

Peeking at sites of weed-growers there sure are enough toys to tinker with

Still don’t know what I’m gonna ask when I sell my tomatoes though.

By: Momma's Boy

Momma's Boy — Sat, 28 Nov 2009 18:43:36 +0000

great stuff. thanks. especially like the christmas light LEDs.

By: Anonymous

Anonymous — Sat, 21 Nov 2009 20:18:26 +0000

Who knows where to download XRumer 5.0 Palladium? Help, please. All recommend this program to effectively advertise on the Internet, this is the best program!

By: xclud

xclud — Fri, 14 Aug 2009 05:37:08 +0000

Please consider posting your software, even if it isn't complete! I stumbled across this doing research for my own Arduino-automated gardening project and I would love to have some place to start.I urge you to embrace the OpenSource community, as we can get much farther porting this to the Arduino together! Please consider posting to SourceForge.Thank you for all of your work so far.

By: The Cheap Vegetable Gardener

The Cheap Vegetable Gardener — Thu, 04 Jun 2009 04:25:44 +0000

Hans, I am currently working with upgrading my parallel and the PS2 controller with an arduino along with some UI improvements to the software. Hopefully this will allow me to share my software in the near future.Anon, CO2 does sound interesting addition, though for my crops ~20% increased yield takes a while to get ROI.

By: Anonymous

Anonymous — Wed, 03 Jun 2009 02:33:07 +0000

With a box that small, adding CO2 might be cheap enough to get a good return on investment.

By: pbarrette

pbarrette — Sat, 23 May 2009 02:28:10 +0000

Please post your software. If you don’t want to support it, then just post the source code. Those who can compile it probably won’t be bothering you for support.At the very least, consider posting it on CodeProject or SourceForge to give others the chance to play with it and expand its usefulness.

By: Hans

Hans — Thu, 12 Mar 2009 20:49:00 +0000

Great project! I’m thinking about trying to put something similar together this weekend. I’m basing mine on a linksys-wrt54gl using openwrt firmware. If you open it up its also got 2 serial ports on headers that can be brought out. I’ll probably just use a cheap pic uC on the other end of serial to toggle the relays, read sensors, etc. The best part is it has built in wireless so you can just add to the web interface to check on you’re plants! No usb port though so camera is out of the question…

By: The Cheap Vegetable Gardener

The Cheap Vegetable Gardener — Thu, 05 Mar 2009 17:08:00 +0000

Matthew, thats it I am fireing my editor…oh wait that is me…I have fixed the typo, thanks fro letting me know. I am sure I have hidden a few more out there for, uh people to find

By: Matthew

Matthew — Thu, 05 Mar 2009 16:55:00 +0000

Trivial edit: “duct table” should probably be “duct tape”. The rest of your (very interesting!) post is well edited, so I noticed the slip-up.Thanks for sharing your work!

By: Allen

Allen — Thu, 05 Mar 2009 14:57:00 +0000

Have you considered posting your code to Sourceforge and making the whole project open source?You could release it and not feel pinned down by tech support. I think there is a large community waiting for open source software like this.Cool project. I love the plaster of paris moisture sensor!

By: The Cheap Vegetable Gardener

The Cheap Vegetable Gardener — Sun, 01 Mar 2009 15:46:00 +0000

Anonymous, thanks for the compliments, really need to work more on the digital/analog side though the PS2 controller solution works though it takes up a decent amount of space in the box and would prefer a cleaner solution. Sounds like I need to dust off my PIC programmer.

By: Anonymous

Anonymous — Fri, 27 Feb 2009 21:52:00 +0000

man i agree. you should change the mane to hightech vegetable gardener. you are making something great, really im very skilled on electronic digital and analog. nothing of software programing. im amazed for your project, is complex and an total solution for automatized gardering facility, very complete!thanks for post your project!!!!!

By: The Cheap Vegetable Gardener

The Cheap Vegetable Gardener — Thu, 22 Jan 2009 04:54:00 +0000

DanielDK, actually I mentioned the option of using arduino but doesn’t give as cool a UI Anonymous, they definitely know their stuff. Funny how money is always a good motivator. Good to remember more is not always better, perfection is not when you have added all you can but when you have taken away all you can.

By: Anonymous

Anonymous — Wed, 21 Jan 2009 03:23:00 +0000

you should look at what weed farmers have done concerning indoor gardening. consider a 400 W lamp and automated watering system (dangerous combination but worth it)

By: DanielDK

DanielDK — Tue, 20 Jan 2009 15:54:00 +0000

AwesomeYou could look into using Arduino and processing to automate your grow box, I’m working on converting a wine barrel into a grow box, and then using the arduino microcontroller “system” to automate and manage ityou can have a look at the arduino on http://www.arduino.cc and http://www.processing.org Will put up a blog when i get my it working

By: Paul

Paul — Tue, 13 Jan 2009 05:02:00 +0000

Please Please Please post your software somewhere, I think its great and would love to tinker with it. Sweet project! My wife is going to love her new automated garden…once I finish building it! ;P

By: jenny

jenny — Sat, 10 Jan 2009 21:03:00 +0000

Do you monitor your carbon dioxide level? In an enclosed box like this with a long light cycle, plants could be deprived of it. (but if you've got fans…may be that's enough?) I've seen LED grow lights out there that claims to be more energy efficient and better for plant growth, I wonder if that could take the place of the CFL at some point. For insulating the box, I wonder if you shouldn't add a skrim (those reflective film) on the inside of your box. Looks like your box is leaking light right now. This may help in intensifying the light in the box and fit better with plants that have high sunlight requirements. A note about hydroponics, I personally am fond of ebb and flow, but the water containment (so that algae don't grow in it) and nutrient monitoring makes me think that good old soil growth is more hands off. aeration is needed in most easy to construct ebb & flow, that that equates to another pump, and another energy consumption on the system. But if I were to go with a hydroponic system with a computer monitoring program, I'd really love a system that monitors nutrient composition of the soil/water, and cartridges full of fertilizer components. One for nitrogen, one for phosphorus, one for potassium, etc. etc. I would think that some sort of printer part can probably be hacked to do this….

By: Dan Faulkner

Dan Faulkner — Sat, 10 Jan 2009 00:59:00 +0000

Thank you for the post and the Ideas.I am thinking of trying something like this for tomato’s and green peppers. Have you thought of using Linux?It has apps for 1 wire sensors and home control as well as MySQL, Apache, PHP etc.You could write a daemon to do the work and a windoze client to monitor it from any where you have Internet as well as a web site on the monitor/control PC.If you decide to look in to that let me know I would be interested.

By: KPL

KPL — Fri, 09 Jan 2009 07:02:00 +0000

You do not need anything fancy for ebb&flow, cheapest pump works for me:) Ebb&flow is the simplest way to build that, my windowsill systems do not have any hoses at all.Get two similar plastic containers that fit one inside the other, rise one of them a bit on some kind of stand-offs. Height must be chosen so the pump fits between them.Lower container is a nutrient storage, pump sits in it; Upper container has a tight-fitting hole in bottom, where pump's outlet is mounted.Pump moves nutrient from the lower to upper container, after that it just flows back.You need a few more holes in bottom to make sure nutrient can flow back a bit so pump does not run dry.You need some screen above the pump outlet so it does not get any debris when nutrient flows back.That's it, you can put any kind of pots in the upper containers, and easily replace or move them as needed. I use clay pebbles as medium, since those were cheapest here.For gypsum blocks do a search on google, but I did not find cheap enough so built myself.LEDs will not help you, theay are much much much more expensive then ordinary straight luminescent tubes, preferably T5.I have some pictures but their location would not handle big traffic:(

By: The Cheap Vegetable Gardener

The Cheap Vegetable Gardener — Thu, 08 Jan 2009 20:58:00 +0000

KPL, just realized I didn't mention it in my list of upcoming features but hydroponics should have been on the list as well. One of the reasons I didn't just pickup a cheap fountain pump and got the automatic watering feature up and running sooner, want to have a pump that I can reuse for EBB & flood hydroponic setup.I have seen the gypsum block technicque but not sure where I can go pick some up, any suggestions?As for lights, hopeing to go ultra cheap with LEDs but see how that goes.

By: KPL

KPL — Thu, 08 Jan 2009 14:43:00 +0000

At this point You should read about hydroponics, that is the way to automate gardening! You will need some containers, small aquarium water pump and a few items more, most of which are easily obtainable.For start you do not need automated monitoring of nutrient pH and salinity, it works fine for me without it.I have built quite a few systems without real automation, using just a simplest timer for pump.Unfortunately I do not have time to build a proper system with moisture sensor and microcontroller.As for a moisture sensor, better choice would be a “gypsum block” – those are available readymade, or can be easily made yourself, using stainless steel screws and some gypsum. That way it is possible to build many sensors that will be more-or-less identical.As for lightning, better choice would be standard luminescent tubes (not compact bulbs) – those are usually more efficient, and have much bigger surface.

By: Anonymous

Anonymous — Wed, 07 Jan 2009 18:52:00 +0000

Please post the finished software this is remarkable I have wanted something like this for my green house for some time

By: Tobias Brox

Tobias Brox — Wed, 07 Jan 2009 18:23:00 +0000

Hm.A friend of me were growing some other kind of plants, he was using more than 1500W of halogen lamps in a very small room, he claimed it was professional lamps formerly used in a greenhouse … and he had quite some problems ventilating out all the heat.I never thought of questioning why he couldn’t use some more energy-efficient lamps instead … I just assumed halogen was needed to get sunshine-bright light.

By: The Cheap Vegetable Gardener

The Cheap Vegetable Gardener — Wed, 07 Jan 2009 18:17:00 +0000

Tom, looks like they brought it back up. Sounds like a story line from a 60’s claymation TV Movie:King Lolipop has outlawed all fruits and vegetables from his kingdom and only our hero Fruit Man can restore the citizen’s health.

By: Tom

Tom — Wed, 07 Jan 2009 17:20:00 +0000

I guess you noticed your video got taken down, probably you had some illegal information on growing drugs (strawberries are considered an illegal drug in many countries). Please post again on another site like vimeo and update Hackaday.com too, you were featured there.

By: The Cheap Vegetable Gardener

The Cheap Vegetable Gardener — Wed, 07 Jan 2009 16:49:00 +0000

Tobias, these things put out some heat but not sure how much it would help on a heating bill, maybe if you had really, really good insulation and you were not in a big hurry to get things warmed up As for pollination, yes most fruits require pollination to produce their fruit. Bees are one of the options, there is also wind and manual pollination. On my daughter’s science project just having a small CPU fan pushing in a little breeze was enough to pollinate, but for some plants might need to pull out a paint brush or vibrating toothbrush and take care of business yourself.

By: Anonymous

Anonymous — Wed, 07 Jan 2009 15:11:00 +0000

Dont you need bees to get new berries/fruits growing?

By: Tobias Brox

Tobias Brox — Wed, 07 Jan 2009 09:34:00 +0000

I'm living in the northern Norway, and we're mostly using electricity for heating … by the laws of thermo dynamics, it is extremely wasteful to convert low-entropy energy (electricity) directly into high-entropy energy (heat). For some years I've been thinking that one should use such "grow boxes" for the general winter heating. It just makes perfect sense for me – it's dark almost all day around, so to get fresh vegetables one anyway needs to use artifical lighting, and the energy cost for generating light + heat -> vegetables + heat should be just about the same as for generating just the heat.

By: The Cheap Vegetable Gardener

The Cheap Vegetable Gardener — Wed, 07 Jan 2009 04:20:00 +0000

Karen, well the snow is melting so might be able to talk about dirt and seeds soon As for posting the software it is not currently in a state I would want to give it out and have the task of free tech support. Possibly when I come up with a more standardized USB controller or something likr ioBridge 204 that Joe mentioned then it could be easier for someone to leverage without being too painful.As for the light intensity of CFL, cucumbers are definately on the high enf for required lumens to flower. I normally grow those outside, though I am thinking of trying peppers inside the box during Spring/Summer since we don’t have the heat for them to due well here up North. Red LEDs could help with the cucumbers though haven’t tried it, still have to make my red LED grow light.

By: Anonymous

Anonymous — Wed, 07 Jan 2009 03:54:00 +0000

Do the CFLs put out adequate light for fruiting plants? I tried a halide grow light for my cucumbers and they wouldn’t grow larger than an inch.

By: Anonymous

Anonymous — Wed, 07 Jan 2009 00:53:00 +0000

parallel ports are the only way to roll. I like to hear every peice of equipment connected to my PC boot everytime I reset.

By: Joe

Joe — Wed, 07 Jan 2009 00:24:00 +0000

Wow! That’s cool.I would love to get a copy of your software. I have a similar project I’m working on using an ioBridge 204.It’s nice to know I’m not the only weirdo!

By: 5525

5525 — Tue, 06 Jan 2009 22:59:00 +0000

First, that is very impressive. As for future ideas, incorporating a cistern would be a relatively cool and easy idea. Using the toilet innerworkings, you could have it monitor itself and fill with tap water if you were ever in a drought. Also posting the pictures online in real time would be interesting.

By: Anonymous

Anonymous — Tue, 06 Jan 2009 22:32:00 +0000

I usually don’t comment on the hacks that are posted, but I would be a hater not to say I am impress with what you have going on. Nice!

By: Anonymous

Anonymous — Tue, 06 Jan 2009 21:32:00 +0000

Are you going to post this software?

By: Karen

Karen — Tue, 06 Jan 2009 19:20:00 +0000

Uh, I think you need to change your blog name to the High-Tech Vegetable Gardener! That’s really impressive. Seattle Garden bloggers mtg. is all set, if you can make it – Sat. Feb 7, 12:30, Miller Library. Check my site for more details if you want to come!