Harvest & Curing DIY automated Drying & Curing box

[JP1]

Just need to find a supplier for the thermoelectric wine-fridges

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I think the cannatrol is a 4 day dry, 4 day cure

 

[PeaceLove&Buds]

A kit would be an interesting idea but I can do you one better. If this works out the way I hope it will, I can build and sell these for a fraction of the price of similar products. Just need to find a supplier for the thermoelectric wine-fridges.

Question for you all: Right now I've built it to automatically go from drying to curing if the humidity stays stable for x amount of time. You can define a minimum time for drying (2 days for example), if after that the humidity stays stable and the dehumidifier stays off for another amount of time (say half a day) the program goes into curing mode. Would you want such automation or do you prefer to switch manually?

Can I stop the automated cure and redefine another dry time if I find my original to be too short? Automation is very convenient but it’s also easy to be paranoid that automation isn’t doing as good a job as you’ve always done before.

 

[Dankerson]

A kit would be an interesting idea but I can do you one better. If this works out the way I hope it will, I can build and sell these for a fraction of the price of similar products. Just need to find a supplier for the thermoelectric wine-fridges.

Question for you all: Right now I've built it to automatically go from drying to curing if the humidity stays stable for x amount of time. You can define a minimum time for drying (2 days for example), if after that the humidity stays stable and the dehumidifier stays off for another amount of time (say half a day) the program goes into curing mode. Would you want such automation or do you prefer to switch manually?

I would say automatic and have it come set at say 4 days drying(default for cannatrol) or whatever you find works best with the option to adjust that day variable. That way you can always set a min dry.

I think the 4 day dry and 4 day cures are both on slopes though so it slowly raises or lowers the dew point according to the set rate over that time.

Be happy to be a tester for the states if you finish it up and make kits!

 

[PeaceLove&Buds]

Can I stop the automated cure and redefine another dry time if I find my original to be too short? Automation is very convenient but it’s also easy to be paranoid that automation isn’t doing as good a job as you’ve always done before.

Although as I think a tad more I suppose it only goes automatically if certain parameters are met as opposed to just a blind switch so yeah automation sounds nice.

 

[PeaceLove&Buds]

Put me down for 3

 

[Rapha El]

okay, i've now broken it apart a little bit.
internally those are 4 variables which effectively result in 3 modes

autoSwitchToCuring = True # if true, change to curing after minDryingTime
minDryingTime = 72
onlySwitchWhenStable = True # if true, require humidity to be stable for minStableTime
minStableTime = 10 # if you don't have an ac, don't set this above 10hrs because of the day/night temp variances

#1 you can disable auto-switching and change modes from curing to drying yourself, when you feel the time is right
#2 auto-switching enabled but onlySwitchWhenStable disabled means it will switch after the set time (ie 72hrs)
#3 both enabled means after the 72hrs has elapsed it starts monitoring the humidity and if that stays stable for, say 10 hours, it switches to curing.

 

[JP1]

Could maybe go up in size if possible too. Main complaints with the cannatrol are the price and size

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[Rapha El]

Yeah, something real nice and large would be sweet. Doubling as a 2-way humidor while you're not drying anything..

But for now mine has 37 Liters volume (~ 9gal), curious to see how much I can get in there. Will have to get some trays to put the weed on where it still can get a good bit of airflow. hmm

Today I partially disassembled the fridge to properly pull some wires inside. Here it is with the coldplate removed, the fan pulls air from the compartment and blows it over the backside of the coldplate to minimize condensation, but for any that does occur there is a little drain towards the bottom.

You see the black cable at the bottom, that's the 12v line for the dehumidifier and controller. For the first version I'll leave the cooling stock and only actively control the humidity.

Of course I had to properly route the wire on the backside, couldn't have it any other way.

now I just have to test the pwm code, assemble everything, add the lcd and write the debug code for that and then i should be ready for the first proper test.

i've also washed the inside properly and got rid of the old thermal schmoo, ordered some good stuff that won't dry out over years and works in freezing temps. for a second i thought about using liquid metal but that'd just be impractical, considering I plan to modify this thing at least 3 times.

so yeah, i'm excited about the prospect of everything coming together in the coming week. and not a day too soon, my strawberry cola's trichomes actually look like cola lol

 

[Frogger]

As noted in post #4 you will most likely need a fan to cool the coil to compensate for door openings.
Have worked with a # of teck coolers in computers & their recovery time is slow . You might find some info on that plate if you search it's wattage..

 

[Rapha El]

As noted in post #4 you will most likely need a fan to cool the coil to compensate for door openings.
Have worked with a # of teck coolers in computers & their recovery time is slow . You might find some info on that plate if you search it's wattage..

With the dehumidifier running, i might.

I've found an interesting talk:

Just for the lols i wrote the functions to control a dehumidifier this way, using vpd.. here's what the chart looks like

for reference this is the drying phase using relative humidity. interesting. also the dip into basically an integrated cure mode where it slowly goes down towards .5 water activity. i wonder if it'll behave like that in real life too.