New Grower donkeykong's grow cabinet

[donkeykong]

fans turned up today so I can get busy with the ventilation topic. Im building a replacement door for the cabinet so I can cut the ports in directly without making unrevertable changes to the cabinet itself.
fans are HUGE. 200mm across , dc brushless. Nice thing about big fans is they can get good air moving with low fan speed, so they should make a quiet job with good airflow.
Need to get a speed controller for them also, probably two if I want a carbon filter on the exhaust then I might need to run one fan faster. Ive cut some 200mm holes in an MDF sheet now for both fans to mates to, and ordered a 200mm > 100mm reducer which I will attached outside the cabinet inlet port to easily mate the 4" ducting I have.
I reckon its going to look quite bling since those fans have led's built into them also

 

[donkeykong]

I've managed to cut some nice clean 200mm holes and mount both the fans on there. I used a pair of zalman fanmate speed controllers. I reckon could have done without the speed controllers, since at full they are just about silent. Very difficult to hear them at all and there is a nice constant stream of air, nothing high velocity but a good constant flow for sure.
Now I'll await a 200mm > 100mm reducer before I can connect the inlet ducting.
For now the outlet also does not have a filter on it, I'll consider it later otherwise run a large air purifier in the room as a whole.

​

 

[donkeykong]

the new vented door is up



not totally complete, still need to put the reducer on the lower 200mm, to get it to 100mm for the ducting to attach to, which will carry the fresh air in. At least there is airflow through the cabinet now. Its almost silent also, no noticeable whirring and the fans don't spin so fast. When you get in front you can feel a little breeze, meaning over that huge diameter its pulling through a fair volume of air. nice

wish i'd had more time to get creative with my pots...

 

[donkeykong]

Was kind of surprised today as two of my five seeds have sprouted and emerged from the soil. Only very tiny, it took a nice camera to picture them. 36hrs since I dropped them into the soil.
Hoping tomorrow morning will bring some more life!

If all goes well Im off to an Ok start, a day or so behind the others but all mines are sprinters so I should be good (assuming I can get my head over the next topics lol!!!)
Still waiting for ducting components to arrive so I can complete the venting system , and still need to get some grow lights which I'll be needing within a few days. Weekend is coming up tho and its a bank holiday, so I might try and pick one up at a shop rather than mail order etc which will leave me where I am till prbly this time next week. Really don't know how long the GU10's will be OK for now, maybe a week? Trouble is Im not going to be able to tell either when they are not doing a good job, cos its my first time. So I figure I might as well sort that out sooner than later.
Its a competition after all, and might as well be in it to win it. And smoke it also

Heres the "Auto Anubis" which popped today ;


and the "Auto Afghan Kush Ryder" also


Hopefully by tomorrow morn its 4/5 popped , lets see

 

[donkeykong]

I have a camera fixed on the Anubis now, diligently taking a snap every 10mins.
Just flipping through the last 6 or 7 images, I can see the thing moving fighting its way up. Amazing to see it! I will find a way to upload the time-lapse video once there are enough frames

 

[donkeykong]

got some work done on the grow cabinet on the weekend. remounted the mylar to the reverse of the cabinet door with the fans and routed all the wires tidily tacking them down. The shelf above the cabinet has become the electrical box, houses a timer and sockets enough to run lights , the PTZ camera, vent fans.
Still awaiting the air intake reducer so the inlet ducting can be connected, but for now its fine so not too worried, they're only tiny yet anyway.

took a trip to moneytree hydro to look at some led grow lights also, ended up buying a long rectangular unit that fits *perfectly* into the cabinet. quite chuffed with that.
Got a couple of led tube lights thrown in "free" also so I'll run those below or aside the plants.

 

[Musturd]

Great possibilities, I'm in.

 

[donkeykong]

Grow cabinet is almost at completion
Im leaving the spotlights in there for now, useful when its time to take pictures, otherwise they are normally off.
There is an ip camera also rigged, its PTZ so im able to have a peek around remotely.



Now that all five seeds have cracked and got going, im quite pleased. I thought I was only going to get 2 of the 5 to germinate at one point... they just needed more time. now just got to make sure they are looked after properly I guess!

 

[donkeykong]

I'd managed to capture images on a schedule on the ip cam. later I was able to put these into a time-lapse video.
This is the auto Anubis growing away over a period of about 6 or 7 hours, quite nice to watch it doing its thing

[video=youtube;ElwBn52pXSQ]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ElwBn52pXSQ&feature=youtu.be[/video]

 

[donkeykong]

good progress so far, though I noticed that the plants look quite long like they are stretching to get to the light, which was at 28" above the plants. I've lowered it to around 20" now, significantly closer. So I'll see how they are tomorrow!




Quite like the time-lapse the other day. Worked nicely since they plants were under a nice white light, now with the led grow light on it saturates the camera quite a bit.
I figured a way to do it, since it would be awesome to see the whole plant growing like this in time-lapse! But I need to sync lighting changes and snapshots, all quite easily done, given some budget, some time and some tinkering.
Maybe for the next grow, ill have some more time to think about it.