I'm gonna build my own dry and cure box from a winefridge and want to take you along for the ride. When I started out, with growing, there was a DIY Lights section that greatly inspired me, to build my own lights and just try stuff out.
After my last dry in the top of my running tent, during summer, without ac, I have to change something. So I want to bring down the temp and keep the humidity in the plants long enough to not become hay in a day. I could use an ac and humidifier to regulate the entire room but that would be like shooting at birds with tanks. So room is too big, we need a smaller box.
My first idea was to just take a regular Eurobox, put in a 20,- Dehumidifier and power that thing with a Hygrostat Controler, like the Inkbird IHC-200. And that would totally work. If I put that in my basement where it's nice and cool all year, this would be a valid way of drying my weed. Just set the Inkbird to 60/62, put the Dehumidifier in the Worker2 outlet, put the sensor and power cable trough a hole in the box, put in the grass and let it run. That'd cost you about 100,- to diy.
Now, I'm not a germophobe.. but the idea of drying my really nice buds that I've taken care of for months in the cellar, is not that appealing to me.
Luckily I've been ripping apart electronics since I was tall enough to peek onto the table, so I thought "if I already have a tec for a dehumidifier, why not use another one to control the temperature?" but in the eurobox that would quickly equalize and not be worth much. so insulation.
And at this point I realized that I was just building a fancy 2 way fridge with inverse humidor functionality. So I started looking into fridges, humidors and coolers. An found the Cannatrol. While I love the idea behind it, after seeing the implementation I want to build my own but differently. From reports on rollipup the Cannatrol regularly overshoots it's temp and humidity when regulating downwards. That's because the thermoelectric element used for dehumidification is contained entirely within the box. The hot side too. So when the humidity gets to the threshold tec2 gets turned on and does it's condensation thing. But it also releaseases the entire ?20 watts into the case which raises the temps and has tec1 turn on which also condenses water because it's just on/off not a variable voltage applied, and then it overshoots because of the thermal mass and large temp delta on both couples.
I'm gonna build this thing in different stages/iterations. X1 will also contain the entire dehumidifier entirely inside but will already control the thermo-couples differently. X2 will then iterate on the integration of the cooling and dehumidifying functionality.
The pieces I'm going to be using are a 37L thermoelectric winefridge, an esp32 microcontroller, sht45 sensor and some componentry to play with power. I'll be using python to write the software for it, because fuck doing that in c. The first version will have a simple segment display and no input, just the hardcoded, timed programm as a minimally viable prototype. For the next one I'll be thinking deeper on the ux of the thing. I don't want to write a dedicated app, to remotely control and monitor it, because if I die, who's gonna maintain that for future operating systems?! So I'm thinking touch display integrated flat into the top of the case so you can control it entirely locally but also configure your network settings for the webserver that'll be running on it, for the management interface.
At least that's the idea. Not an original idea, one thread that has inspired me on this was: this one. I'd also like to thank everybody who helped me figure things out. this will be a fun project.
After my last dry in the top of my running tent, during summer, without ac, I have to change something. So I want to bring down the temp and keep the humidity in the plants long enough to not become hay in a day. I could use an ac and humidifier to regulate the entire room but that would be like shooting at birds with tanks. So room is too big, we need a smaller box.
My first idea was to just take a regular Eurobox, put in a 20,- Dehumidifier and power that thing with a Hygrostat Controler, like the Inkbird IHC-200. And that would totally work. If I put that in my basement where it's nice and cool all year, this would be a valid way of drying my weed. Just set the Inkbird to 60/62, put the Dehumidifier in the Worker2 outlet, put the sensor and power cable trough a hole in the box, put in the grass and let it run. That'd cost you about 100,- to diy.
Now, I'm not a germophobe.. but the idea of drying my really nice buds that I've taken care of for months in the cellar, is not that appealing to me.
Luckily I've been ripping apart electronics since I was tall enough to peek onto the table, so I thought "if I already have a tec for a dehumidifier, why not use another one to control the temperature?" but in the eurobox that would quickly equalize and not be worth much. so insulation.
And at this point I realized that I was just building a fancy 2 way fridge with inverse humidor functionality. So I started looking into fridges, humidors and coolers. An found the Cannatrol. While I love the idea behind it, after seeing the implementation I want to build my own but differently. From reports on rollipup the Cannatrol regularly overshoots it's temp and humidity when regulating downwards. That's because the thermoelectric element used for dehumidification is contained entirely within the box. The hot side too. So when the humidity gets to the threshold tec2 gets turned on and does it's condensation thing. But it also releaseases the entire ?20 watts into the case which raises the temps and has tec1 turn on which also condenses water because it's just on/off not a variable voltage applied, and then it overshoots because of the thermal mass and large temp delta on both couples.
I'm gonna build this thing in different stages/iterations. X1 will also contain the entire dehumidifier entirely inside but will already control the thermo-couples differently. X2 will then iterate on the integration of the cooling and dehumidifying functionality.
The pieces I'm going to be using are a 37L thermoelectric winefridge, an esp32 microcontroller, sht45 sensor and some componentry to play with power. I'll be using python to write the software for it, because fuck doing that in c. The first version will have a simple segment display and no input, just the hardcoded, timed programm as a minimally viable prototype. For the next one I'll be thinking deeper on the ux of the thing. I don't want to write a dedicated app, to remotely control and monitor it, because if I die, who's gonna maintain that for future operating systems?! So I'm thinking touch display integrated flat into the top of the case so you can control it entirely locally but also configure your network settings for the webserver that'll be running on it, for the management interface.
At least that's the idea. Not an original idea, one thread that has inspired me on this was: this one. I'd also like to thank everybody who helped me figure things out. this will be a fun project.
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