Well we all got the go ahead to plant off Dave. This is great news because here in England the temperature is dropping and the sunlight intensity is dropping with it. Most of my systems are soi less, to keep things simple I use Rockwool starter...
In the previous water meter Blogs we used a cheap flow meter to give us a measure of water flowrate and total water used. The flow meters are cheap and the spec sheet can be misleading, this code is used to get a real world value of number of pulses ...
To get this project running quickly, I will be using an Arduino for a lot of the control. As time goes by I plan on replacing the Arduino funcions with code on the EZR32WG, but this is the only way I can see to complet the project by the deadline. Th...
I have most of the wiring completed for the controls of the system. The relays have been wired to outlets, and all of the sensors have been wired to an interface board. Here is my dirt cheap homemade woden control cabinet. It was the best I could do ...
Hi vertical farmers, In the previous post we discussed our power source and energy storage system and how we intend to supply our Modular Farm taking the most energy out of a solar panel while keeping the battery charge under control. We wi...
A updated Flow meter monitor to incorporate a LCD shield, log min and max flow rates. If you want to incorporate some error logging [water loss or burst pipe] see the last blog for setting error flags. LCD Shiled that it will work with:&nbs...
Nothing Very Interesting here, more for newbies learning about interfacing hardware. This code will work on uno and mega, it will display the Uptime on the LCD sheild like the one in the image below: Header 1 /...
It is a good idea to go organic with PH buffers, it works out quite cheap aswell. I worked with commercial chemical buffers in the past and have had a few finger print removing accidents, This Blog will cover how to make an safe and organic PH buffer...
Over the last 2 weeks I have come to realize that I am running out of time to do everything I want, and I will have to simplify things a bit in order to get something useful done by the end of the competition. Unfortunately I have run into issues wit...
Hi vertical farmers, In the previous post we presented our Maximum Power Point Tracking (MPPT) solar module converter hardware. We described the circuitry, the measured variables and the sensors used. On this post we will go deeper into the...
Decent progress today. Geyser pump works, although it is not particularly efficient at pumping water, the fact is, it DOES do the job. Waiting for the silicone to dry on various parts so that the fully automated nutrient mixing and PH balancing syste...
Hey Guy’s sorry for the delay, This is some basic info/background research to make an Open Source chemical analyser for the nutrient fluid in aquaponics/hydroponics systems. We really need more information about the growing fluid at our disposa...
So, I'm obviously the tardy one in the group of challengers here, but today my daughter and I will be constructing the hydroponics portion of the actual project. We've got syringes, one way check valves, linear actuators, relays, transistors, P...
I will be posting a few examples of other people using the EC meter in their application here. It is great that other people are finding the projects easy to follow, I will expand on a few projects and talk a little about the extra problems to overco...
In the last Blog [11] we covered how to make a self learning Hydropinics nutrient doser, it worked out the system variables to keep the growing fluid at the specified EC. This works very well, but we might be able to go one step further. This Bl...
This Blog isn't directly related to growing food, but is one that a few people might find interesting. After all good pollination of fruiting plants is heavily dependant on bee's. You can buy kits to convert your honey extractor from hu...
This week has been a busy week on the farm, not that much work done regarding the project. In the last Blog [11] we covered how to make a self learning Hydropinics nutrient doser, it worked out the system variables to keep the growing fluid at t...
I ended up being completely swamped with my day job this week, so not a whole lot of progress to report. I received the small linear actuators yesterday, and the 12V aquarium pump today. The 12V/5V open frame power supply is in transit.&n...
Hi vertical farmers, In the previous post we presented the database structure and implementation that we will be using to store multiple data from our sensors and actuators. Moreover, we also posted some images of the work under development...
OK, so I received the EZR32WG starter kit last Friday. Thanks to element14Dave! This is not much of a blog post, but it's intended only as an update and the result of having recieved the EZR32WG starter kit last Firday. I spent the wee...
I have gotten a lot done since my last post, but I don't have time to write a detailed blog at the moment. I did want to give an update on my first chance to get started with what will be the controller for this project. More to come shortly. Th...
In this blog post, I will present and explain the remainder of the design and implementation of my vertical farming SCADA system.This post is focused on system data acquisition, utilization, and logging and will serve as an overview of the data to be...
The ram pump with waste capture and feedback ended up being a total bust, although it did actually work. The issue I had in using this was with the amount of additional nutrients that would have been required, given the size of the pressure chamber a...
Now we are moving along. I recently received all my aquaponics equipment like the Hydroton, new pump, electrical equipment etc. and have been able to continuously add to the Mini Plant 2. As I was adding more equipment to the system, I had to add in ...
Hi vertical farmers, In the previous post we presented our vision system capable of detecting plant illness, disorders and development stages.In this post we talk about the database we will use to store measurements, production figures and suppo...
