Grow Room 2017 PC Micro Grows with Mr. Sparkle

[Mr.Sparkle]

I guess its been three weeks since my last update.

Well when i was away the I2C communication locked up and caused the pump to lock on, so flooded the plants but they all survived but weren't doing great, and due to the overly wet situation all the pots were developing algae, fungus, mold, and some springtails and potworms flourished because of it, how they got in there no idea, but tried sterilizing the coco afterwards and the last treatment round seemed to work decent but the damage had already been done so i tossed pretty much all the plants except the cream mandarine i was reversing i chopped it back and sprayed a bit more CS as it needing a little bit more, its doing decent now and has some seeds in the works so sweet.

Also i also noticed the plants that i had just started in my bucket also had springtails, so they got moved over to the case as i wasn;t worried about cross contamination anymore, but they got a basic diy soil treatment once they were moved over and it looks like it worked decent.

The lockup issues were somewhat resolved with pull up resistors on the data and clock line for the lcd, apparently my I2C backpack doesn't have them even though i thought they did, still will be looking for a different library that doesn't cause hangups though.

But today i finally got around to finishing some of the upgrades, went with a different watering layout where the pressure is more equalized, ordered the couple fittings from china but wasn't expecting them for months but they came in a couple weeks so bonus on that, Also swapped out my reservoir for a Ikea klamtare container which is now underneath my pc case instead of on top like my gravity feed setup for anti auto suction and drainage reasons, the bonus is it raises up the case which makes the plants more view able and easier to work with while sitting on the floor.

edit: oh and Ashla is no more she got scrapped so i only have the one pc case and one bucket now

Anyways here's a picture.

 

[The Elvis]

 

[GodAmJT]

Damn man!!! That was a hell of a journey!! I hadn't realized I hadn't stopped by since May!!! I'm kinda bummed that you retired Ashla!! I've always been one to try and have a contingency so in the event of an emergency or a catastrophe, I could fall back to a relatively stable environment.. That's part of the reason I never got rid of my small tent.. I'm not sure of how detailed it is to program the Arduinos, but if it wasn't too bad or you could copy the programming and bring it over to the other box, you could run both environments simultaneously.. Perhaps it's too much?? I'm not sure, but I've seen you rock those cases for a while now, and they've always had me more than impressed!!!! Hopefully all of that stuff gets squared away though!!!!!

 

[bad dragon bzzz]

dang more than just a spot of bother.glad the girls ok,and hope you healing to.
good luck.

 

[Mr.Sparkle]

Damn man!!! That was a hell of a journey!! I hadn't realized I hadn't stopped by since May!!! I'm kinda bummed that you retired Ashla!! I've always been one to try and have a contingency so in the event of an emergency or a catastrophe, I could fall back to a relatively stable environment.. That's part of the reason I never got rid of my small tent.. I'm not sure of how detailed it is to program the Arduinos, but if it wasn't too bad or you could copy the programming and bring it over to the other box, you could run both environments simultaneously.. Perhaps it's too much?? I'm not sure, but I've seen you rock those cases for a while now, and they've always had me more than impressed!!!! Hopefully all of that stuff gets squared away though!!!!!

The thing with Ashla even though that case was really ironed out at the end was it was always a bit too tall in my mind or at least with the pot size i settled with as plants were always reaching for the light in comparison to Bogan, but that was due too two reasons mainly ,one even though Ashla had more efficient COBs putting out more light, Bogan had roughly 15-20% less sq area it was also about 4" shorter too, i always felt the plants weren't utilizing the height of Ashla without me having to add more light either by buyinf soem new ballasts with higher amperage or adding more lights. Also im not too worried about backup contingencies as one i have enough on hand for myself that i don't need to grow for quite some time with my consumption, and i also have my 5 gal bucket as backup if need be.
As for writing the code to the boxes its just a simple upload through a usb cable, the programming of your code can be easy enough for basic stuff and is easy to learn, its just the more complex stuff takes some time, but once its written you just keep it and modify it to suit your needs or updates.

Think i mainly have it squared away now though, there are a couple of changes i want to make or things that will need some tweaking such as new watering system with the hoses and such and the tuning of the watering duration and soil sensor trigger point which is the same as the old setup jsut need to tune it for this setup, but i also want to swap out the case fan to a Noctua just for less noise which will allow me to remove the PWM fan control code i have in there, which if running that leaner code it will actually be running the same code as my bucket, Which i may be building another bucket shortly with the leftovers of what i have and build it with some refinements or changes as a stage 2 of the bucket, but im currently contemplating ballast selection and how much light i want run with the old v15 cobs, or if i want to go with a simpler solution that anyone could copy with a trip to a big box store.

dang more than just a spot of bother.glad the girls ok,and hope you healing to.
good luck.

Yeah everything's good

 

[Mr.Sparkle]

another couple days and still needs a bit of tweaking.

 

[hairyman]

Keeping it busy pal

 

[Mr.Sparkle]

Another 5 days, the couple of seeds that were forming are starting to finish out but it will still be probably two more weeks before ill chop the Cream Mandarine for them, as for the other plants they are doing alright, a bit sluggish probably from my earlier whitetail treatment i did which i haven't seen any since, but one of the Dark Devils F1's threw some balls which is either due to some random over spray of the CS treatment of the Cream Mandarine or i stressed them out but high likely hood of the former we will see how the plant behave over the next week or so, if still sluggish i'll just toss them.

 

[Mr.Sparkle]

4 days later, the one dark devil bolted which is rather odd, but could possibly be a seed mix up as i had two varieties with my f1's with one being a taller lankier version which i don't prefer but possibly got into this round, also moved over a mutant Auto Blues from the bucket , to one give the other plants more room and two it would of been overgrown if it stayed it the bucket.

Really this case is just acting as a hold over for everything at the moment, i'm not too concerned to have things run ideally, so i'll just run everything out as is and may chop various plants as they progress, but will eventually migrate to a completely empty case and start a fresh cycle now that things are a bit more squared away after the updates.

 

[bad dragon bzzz]

thats some growing in 4 days,could turn into a game of twister soon.
keep er lit.