New Grower donkeykong's grow cabinet

[donkeykong]

plants have got back to looking good again over the last week. had to up the nutrients and water them daily instead of every 2 days. they are drinking more now, and I guesse the small pots don't hold much for them.

this is day 37 to 39 for them.

 

[donkeykong]

thanks Steve O!
Been working on the EC probes section still. I have a couple of different test circuits on my breadboard that ive been doing some measurements with. going to start building up "the controller" soon, will read different sensors like the EC probes, pH probes etc.
Takes a while getting it right, in the end it has to work like a measurement eqpt and keep in good calibration with minimal effort. seeing what options there are for interfacing to some "low cost" industrial probes also.

the next mini challenge is to interface these two EC reading circuits to an Arduino microprocessor board and start making some readings, get some calibration solution and a commercial probe to test with, calibrate and see which circuit gives the better results. then start thinking about how best to temperature compensate

 

[Captain Howdy]

Howdy DK

Your rooms looking great, gotta say, you've put yourself through quite an intense crash course to get to where you are, bravo sir. The next one's gonna be a breeze..... Any plans yet?

Do you have a jewellers loupe for a little later in the game?? I've just picked mine up and so wished I'd bought it earlier. Look forward to seeing you pimp out some loupe shots.

Kick back and have a banana dude, you seem to be working things great.

High 5

 

[rockinvermont]

Nice setup donk , I use a 110 volt high / low switch w adjustable thermostat for cooling fan in summer and emergency lights in fall
When temp drops lights go on and wired with 2 plugs so you can set fan to start at desired tmp.
Rock on donkey

 

[lowbudge]

hey donkey, good to see youre back in the game my friend!
looking healthy again. I wonder why my ladies always bush out like crazy.
they are as old as yours, but not that deep into flower...
(I hope to get finished in comp time)

cheers, lb

 

[donkeykong]

hi lowbudge!!
not sure why that might be, but I guesse I did change to flowering feed as well a week or two back to help the buds get buddier. Temp has been kept quite high throughout, since its in a cabinet next to the boiler and kept warm, 28 to even 33 deg c in the heat we had over the weekend, night drop about 10 deg C.
Everything else stayed the same, really. hey maybe they just like the ballet they got going on

 

[donkeykong]

thanks guys!
Yeah im chuffed overall with the plants, all coming through and looking like I will have a small harvest to look forward too!

RivalFish... I was not familiar with the jewellers loupe thing, had to look it up. interesting - does it work to take OK to take shots through?! My first thought was one of those usb microscope things you get these days.
good idea though, kind of exhausted the capability of my camera lens.

Been working away on my plot for v2 in the background , its not going to be a quick thing but should be capable of something amazing

Still playing with the EC meters, my first little probe has some big limitations but OK for test. Need more surface area on the conductors so I've been looking at the options. Theres a graphite probe on order , also Im trying another idea using immersion gold plated pcb probe. This circuit uses a simple 555 timer, then an arduino microprocessor is reading the freq and converting to the EC. Other methods are more elaborate and I want to evaluate which will give accurate readings.
The reading on the display is only about 15uS out against my cheap EC pen thing on this reading. Need some better eqpt and calibration solutions to get it spot on, but better probes first.
Proper EC probes are very expensive things, I want to find a nice affordable way to do it, well.
Graphite probes from Aliexpress were just £28 each, so quite cheap, worth a try.
The other thing Im trying is the immersion gold probe pcb, its not quite what I need, but I can edit it and see if any good, £7 each.
The tiny red part on the top of the breadboard is a digital temp IC, its giving the temperature reading seen on the lcd screen.

so far so good

 

[donkeykong]

Hey folks... I created a new thread under DIY for the EC meter stuff I am doing. It will turn into its own adventure so I thought I'll give it a proper home now and built it up as I go along , https://www.autoflower.org/f28/diy-ec-meter-22746.html

We're getting into the final few weeks of the 32oz grow comp now and things are hotting up. My plants are not so very tall but they are starting to look like I'll be enjoying some good smoke very soon now
I guesse that's what to expect from such small pots, next time I want to go bigger definitely and get these guys up to their genetic potential. The proof will be in the pudding, then I'll decide if I want to try some other strains or try some of these again under different circumstances. Think different will be on the hit list, maybe a "dragon" I keep hearing about.

 

[lowbudge]

Hey folks... I created a new thread under DIY for the EC meter stuff I am doing. It will turn into its own adventure so I thought I'll give it a proper home now and built it up as I go along , https://www.autoflower.org/f28/diy-ec-meter-22746.html

We're getting into the final few weeks of the 32oz grow comp now and things are hotting up. My plants are not so very tall but they are starting to look like I'll be enjoying some good smoke very soon now
I guesse that's what to expect from such small pots, next time I want to go bigger definitely and get these guys up to their genetic potential. The proof will be in the pudding, then I'll decide if I want to try some other strains or try some of these again under different circumstances. Think different will be on the hit list, maybe a "dragon" I keep hearing about.

they look fantastic bro.
anyways, when is32oz going to finish? 1st of August?


cheers, lb

 

[donkeykong]

hiya lowbudge.... comp last day is July 31st, so we are just only 2.5 weeks away now.
I was thinking again about what you asked earlier, the other big thing that is different I omitted, is the lighting. If I recall you have those 30W module things, and I the 200W big thing, plus the grow cfl thing is back in again now. From what I understood the lamp(s) needs to be good for vegetative and also flowering, which needs different spectrums mix. Different mix of red and blue, and they need enough power to drive the flowering. less power might grow them but not have enough kick for flowering well. plenty of power but not in the right bands for flowering would also give the same result.

At least its good with this comp we have got to see lots of different strains, growing conditions, mediums, and compare and learn from each other

for me I wish I could have had taller plants, maybe I could have stretched em higher, but I cant complain they are starting to look like they are packing on bud mass and I could be quite chuffed with making it through to first harvest without disaster !!
Last few days as well they are looking bigger and more leaves and fatter things all over the place. few have orange hairs on the top.

Afghan mass is quite tall compared to the others and is packing out nicely too ;



Today I moved the Green-O-Matic out of the cabinet and stuck it in the greenhouse. Its quite a small plant it wont be much trouble there im sure. Need the space now since the plants were starting to rub leaves on the turntables. so now there are 4 going round in the cabinet.