Chemdog & Blue Cheese 1000w grow

CrudeDude

Well-Known Member
Dude. WTF!?

Lucy you got some splaining to do, what the hell, what's up with the controller what else does it do, track radar? launch missiles maybe, what the hell dude?? Lol
It’s a logic controller. Its used in building automation applications. All the way from refrigeration/hvac automation to irrigation and lighting, co2 humidity etc. Could do the same with a Pi and some programming. Currently I’ve got 16 available analog inputs for sensors and 8 onboard relay outputs that I can use to control the piece of equipment I want to control. That’s just on one board. I can link up to 64 boards to the controller and that’s just the analog input and relay output capacity. Essentially I can pretty much control any part of a grow or multiple grows. Can link it online so you can monitor graphs and temps remotely as well. If only I lived in a state it was legal I’d go around and build and automate growrooms lol. That’d be a sweet job.
 

Buck5050

Well-Known Member
Thanks man. Been a lot of tinkering to get the room dialed in. That little humidifier works good for a 25$ Walmart one. Keeps it right we’re I need to be . However the built in switch is not ideal so if you go with one like this you’ll need to break the hot leg through a humidistat for better control.
No issues restarting when switched on and off externally? If not I might snatch one of these up. I seen a 700ml dehumidifier for around the same cost and a controller under $40. Bout 100 with all 3 pieces. I starting looking to make a drying cabinet and that got the wheels turning. That humidifier came up as I was looking around.
 

CrudeDude

Well-Known Member
No issues restarting when switched on and off externally? If not I might snatch one of these up. I seen a 700ml dehumidifier for around the same cost and a controller under $40. Bout 100 with all 3 pieces. I starting looking to make a drying cabinet and that got the wheels turning. That humidifier came up as I was looking around.
No not at all. Only thing is since it’s small you gotta check it everyday and refill as needed and when I refill I just switch off then back to its highest setting since I’m controlling it externally. Also I wrapped the water jug portion in duct tape and put tape over the switch to block the light from the leds in it.
 

CrudeDude

Well-Known Member
The dehumidifier is only in there for watering days. Otherwise it’ll get up to 70%. This way the room is always between 48-54% humidity or whatever I wanna change it to. Temps stay between 70-74 with usually around 76 at the canopy. Did the same thing with a space heater and keeps room from dropping below 70 in lights out cycle. Only thing I have left to automate is PH and water. Need to get a couple solenoids for water valves and I’ll be set.
 

CrudeDude

Well-Known Member
Update: Day 13 flower
Went ahead and trimmed the bottom up as well. Not much change. Cut some smaller stuff out so they should pop up more. Been gone a week so they needed some attention that’s for sure. They don’t look too bad. They are both pretty hardy strains tbh. These three have been through some shit lol

FB0C0176-661D-40A3-A81F-CBF782A07958.jpeg
Before the trim
199C1E2A-6894-4918-AF1D-4773CDDA5820.jpeg

After the trim
9E8260D2-6AF5-44B3-8325-CBE84CBAEEA2.jpeg
 

CrudeDude

Well-Known Member
Update : Day 20 flower

Just get home from being out of town all week and plants look good. The odor finally kicked in which smells pretty nice. No concerns outside the room with odor so thats good, guess the filters working like it should. Anyway here’s a couple pics. I’ll get a lights off shot later and post it.
F6A278AF-04DF-4F90-A8E6-F741C6060207.jpeg
5C24BF6B-A2B2-41F3-A8FF-3441FA9CEDC1.jpeg
0E44CB57-2C6F-417A-8E2B-C4464037A134.jpeg
A0BD4C80-9F55-433D-A269-BE7B939C0126.jpeg
193B4783-CE94-4A02-890F-EE34305CBB4A.jpeg
 

bfatal

Well-Known Member
Oh baby that looks juicy. Cool controller as well I do door access and I am using a single door controller with relays and inputs right now that links to a phone app for controlling my stuff. However you have a TON more options with all the slots you have available lol. Very cool! I'll be watching as well
 

CrudeDude

Well-Known Member
Oh baby that looks juicy. Cool controller as well I do door access and I am using a single door controller with relays and inputs right now that links to a phone app for controlling my stuff. However you have a TON more options with all the slots you have available lol. Very cool! I'll be watching as well
Thanks man. Nice, I can hook this controller up to my network with a cat5 cable and remote into it wherever I wanted but don’t feel the need for it yet. Next grow I’m going for full 100% automation but I need a few pieces of equipment to achieve that. Water automation for soil is a bitch trying to get it right. Essentially I wanna have it self sustained after seedling stage.

Here’s a pic after lights out. Sorry it’s a bit blurry. I’ll take a better one later.
B1DA68F2-1F16-4641-A1FB-75F2CC3D218C.jpeg
 

CrudeDude

Well-Known Member
Update: week 4.5 flower

Bout to hit 5 weeks Saturday. Still got 4 more to go. Had some ph meter issues which got one of my girls real deficient and another showing signs. Couldn’t get a new meter right away so just fed them straight distilled no nuets. For about a week and a half. Got them their first fixed watering yesterday so will check again today to see if the ones color is coming back. Buds are fattening up decently. Never grown these strains but looks like the blue cheese has fatter nugs but the chem dawg has got more trichomes production. Here’s a few pics. No order just random pics of last week and week before. Haven’t gotten any recent pics but these are about a week and a half old or so. Notice the back one is a bit yellowed.
66310E0A-60E4-4E69-8C70-76B72E61CD13.jpeg
EDCB1127-0CAF-4B31-BA99-A09E1ACB0459.jpeg
CC6DF184-E54E-44AB-8FBC-77C16B0E0711.jpeg
B37D264F-82EC-4553-9257-C23D1B0C45C7.jpeg
F57936C2-C79B-4128-9351-98F490E513A9.jpeg
 

CrudeDude

Well-Known Member
Here’s a few pics of the girls tonight right before lights on. Looks like the new meter is working better. The one in the back is starting to get its color back just after one feeding and I noticed they are drinking faster again. So hopefully they continue with that trend. All in all they buds are pretty dense now and smelly!
0A01005F-E1A5-4047-B978-0A5205DF2A7F.jpeg
8F9EDA77-DF45-476C-8E5E-506576627BF1.jpeg
7A36B160-361F-4A33-84EA-3A16A3C48E36.jpeg
 

CrudeDude

Well-Known Member
Update: start of week five flower today.

This is gonna be a long post FYI. Stoners who don’t like to read should scroll to the bottom for pics lol

Haven’t given much info on watering and temps etc lately so here goes.

All started from seed in ffof soil in 5g pots. Each plant topped once at 5th node and then lst’d Under the scrog. The room was moved three times so it caused slow growth during early veg. New room is proper though and they loved the move.
Nuets are dutchbpro brand. Using just the A/B, multi total, take root and explode as well as adding some cal/mag.

Was feeding every other water and watering once a day but that proved to be too much so now I’ve been just watching the plants and at least feeding once a week with nuets. Ph’d water inbetween feeds.

Water type:
distilled(from store or my dehumid collection bin) occasionally tap water left out over night. We have bad tap water so I try not to use it. 298ppm and ph 8.9. Left out overnight and ppm drops about 30-40 ppm but nothing more usually.

Ph:
6.5 every time minus two weeks my meter broke. Water temps usually around 72 when checked. I first started veg at 5.8 ph but quickly realized that was incorrect

Ppm:
900-950 every time durning flower. 800-850 during veg
I have fed slightly less then the bottles recommend though throughout the grow.

Temps:
So temps have been fun.... I haven’t noticed much difference but during lights on, my temps float around 72-76 and same for lights out.... they say to make it colder duringnlights off but haven’t seen much difference with keeping temps constant throught the entire grow though. They don’t seem to mind it.

Co2:
monitoring co2 levels. Usually sitting around atmospheric co2 levels around 518ppm and raises up whennim in here. No control fornit. Just wanted to know the ppm really. Did make a co2 generator with sugar and yeast but never saw an increase in ppm so I ditched it.

Humidity:
During veg I was running 55%-60% RH constantly. Flower i started at 50-55 then dropped to 40-45 after a few weeks. They seem to like it there. For control, I have a humidistat that monitors the RH and controls outputs to my controller for a humidifier and a dehumidifier. Keeps RH exactly where I need it regardless of hvac or exhaust running.

Exhaust:
440cfm in-line fan to a 16” carbon filter. Set to operate between 73 cut out -76 cut in and then once every hour for two minutes to recycle air.

Hvac:
8000btu window unit. I re wired the unit and bypassed all the onboard controls and hard wired it to one of my controllers relays and cycle off various temps around the room that I then average and control the hvac. I built a plenum off the window unit and ran it to a 6” duct that goes along the floor. Return was untouched.

Lights:
Started with 1000wt mh during veg. Was too much so I dimmed it down to 600. They responded well after that and stoped bleaching it seemed. When flower started I switched to the 1000wt hps and then a few weeks later bumped it up to 1100 wt. they seem to like it still.

Veg light height was around 2.5 feet from canopy.
Flower light height is sitting around 16” +\- from tops after the stretch.

Fans:
I have one stand Up oscilating fan behind them blowing over the tops on lowest fan speed. Fans roughly 3-4 feet away. I have another 24” box fan in the front of them blowing under the screen. Also on lowest setting about same distance apart.

Controllers:
I’m using a controller meant for grocery stores but with a bit of re programming I’ve adapted into what I need and works quite well. I’ll put it this way, with this one controller I could probably control 20 grow rooms all the same size and still have room to add to it. I am currently only running one input board and one output board. But capable of running up to 64 boards on the same channel. I have 2 channels.... each board has 16 inputs and 8 outputs either n/o or n/c, your choice. I have 16 inputs that I can use to read temps humidity co2 light levels etc. any analog or digital input can be assigned to one of the 16 points weather it be a 0-10v or 4-20ma or resistance based input. I also have 8 available relay outputs capable of up to 250v at 5a. For my higher amp equipment I run them through a secondary 24v relay that’s rated much higher and then cycle the coil voltages though my board.

Sensors in the room:
I’ve got several sensors through the room. All sensors are 10k thermistor types. Ive got one for exhaust inlet temp, hvac return temp, canopy temp, and room temp. I average some or all and control various things based off averages. Aside from the sensors that are actually controlling things I’ve got some basic stand alone min/max sensor and humidity sensors sitting at the root zone and canopy levels.

What am I controlling:
I control the lights, hvac, space heater, exhaust, humidifier and dehumidifier. Next step is automated watering. Not quite confident on that yet though. Still some things to work out to get something that works well for soil. Hydro is an easy game. I prefer soil though. However s good automated water cycle is hard to nail down.

Electrical specs:
I have three dedicated breakers for my room. Hvac and light are on a 50amp and the rest is split between the two remaining 30 amp breakers. That’s sufficient for my current setup.

Defoliation:
I was never a fan before. I am now though. I only defoliate twice. Once before flower and then again a few weeks into flower. I grow under a screen so I strip EVERYTHING under the screen and any shoots that won’t make it to the top or only have 1-2 node sections. Then let her go for a few weeks and then check again. I’ll trim up any small new growth in the canopy but also I’ll look at bud sites as they develop. If I’ve got some small ones not quite to the canopy I’ll try and move things around to get more light to it but usually I just cut them out. I call them larf buds. Basically just look at all the nugs. If you’ve got some below canopy level and are struggling just cut them off. The inverse will send your nuets to the other sites and stop trying to grow a larf bud down below.

Tips:
Wind burn will make you chase your tail....

A completely pitch black room for flowering is a myth. Obviously you want it dark but from what I’ve seen on my grow and tested, it doesn’t need to be pitch black. I have light coming through the return of my hvac unit and a few spots along the walls where I sealed with foam that daylight kinda breaks through but it’s a very subtle light. I covered all the led lights on all the equipment. Someone should really make all this shit with green led lights and not red lol. Either way though I’ve got a dehumid unit that glows at night and they haven’t minded it yet.

Get your setup dialed in before you stick the plants in it. And actually run it for a few days with no plants. We are always excited to start but if you spend the extra time setting up it’ll make it s lot less painful throughout.

And last but NOT least......consistency.....consistency is key. I’m not saying you need to catalog the time and day when you fed and the weight of each plant etc but you should try to keep everything as consistent as possible. Temps, humidity etc.

Lol I was joking about the pics..... sry lol. just read through previous logs and you’ll see them. Ones above this post are from this morning. Anyone wants any other info let me know. I’ll take some close up bud pics tonight right before lights come on and upload.
 

TenerifeJon

Well-Known Member
Completely pitch black room is not a myth I can assure you that but some strains don’t mind and some can be a lot more sensitive to light leak and also depends on the light that is leaking in green and red light don’t seem to matter but blues and whites do seem to matter iv had some hemi from light leak and it’s always the one closest to the leak that hemis
 
Top