To get back on track how about some questions...
- What PSI is the system running?
- What sizes droplets are you aiming for?
- What is the hang-time of the mist?
- How much water does each nozzle use per spray, per second?
- Have you been able to produce fine root hairs? Do you have photos?
- How do you maintain root zone temp?
- How do you determine when to change your spray cycle? Data logging? Manual inspection?
- What sized cannabis plants are you aiming for? Is this for a SOG setup or will it grow 2lb monsters like I prefer? (Plant-count matters.)
Please realize I am not trying to be an ass here, but every few months someone comes by and touts aero, brings up the same old data, and claims they have it all figured out. Those of us who've done it simply try and save them the time and money. It's up to you whether you learn from us or not...
Yeah thanks for that, I appreciate the effort to get back on track
I'm not here to tout about HPA anything and just want to learn more about the hobbyist market on a more personal level and see if anything of my technology would apply to it - in any shape or form.
To answer your question though...
- no psi, just a self priming peristaltic pump feeding the rotary atomiser
- I'm not aiming for anything as such, it's up to the user... range from about 30microns up to 500 microns roughly
- depends on water droplet size, and also how you use the air flow generated by the rotary atomizer... e.g. you can activate the rotary atomizer with the larger fan blades without waterpump so that you generate an upwards airflow without a mist to potential increase the hang time of the mist
- Theres no nozzles, just rotary atomizer with the smallest orifice size of 4mm for easy cleaning and potentially large flowrates. Current prototype uses an adjustable flowrate between 0 to 800ml per min (13ml per sec) but i believe it could potentially have a max flow rate of 3000ml per min.
- I haven't (and don't particularly plan to, unless it proves worthwhile) built an entire system for the hobbyst market, so that would be up to the user to implement root chamber and method of maintaining root zone temp. In my commercial system we use copper finned heat exhangers strategically placed to provide air movement by convection.
-ATM it's a lot of data logging via sensors, manual inspection and playing around with it. We are starting to develop the machine learning algorithms so the smaller and routine changes are done automatically to mist schedule and desired mist properties related to temp, light cycle, humidity etc, but user input would still be required for larger changes.
-it's never gonna be appropriate to grow 2lb monster plants in Aero, even if it was possible. I'm aiming the technology for growing smaller plants (3ft absolute max) with faster growth rates
No pics at this stage i'm willing to share because the only pictures i have of plants are for internal use focused on the technology side of things, most of which we want patents for. The trial grows are coming up soon enough and i will have patents filed by then also.
I can talk abstract about some stuff, as you can't patent vague concepts. So for instance, we don't use standard net pots that grow roots in an un-optimised way for Aeroponics. We also don't use a static atomizer and we use a secondary recirculating system separate to the main tanks so each grow system has it's own nutrient system in a smaller form so changes within the root zone are more accurately analysed in a feedback loop for the machine learning aspect. Every bit of technology has a fail safe mechanism and simultaneously alerts users of the problem - each main component is designed to be replaced in less than 30 secs.
The idea is not that my system is the perfect aeroponic system, but that it allows you to modify the root zone environment easily in a reliable way. So you may use true Aeroponics for the first month and then switch to an environment where the roots are soaked and you replicate an NFT system and then towards the end of the grow when your roots/plants are fully developed, you may want to lower the temperature and reduce misting cycle to produce root hairs on the already developed root structure and then towards the final few days, you reduce the misting cycle even further to stress out the plant.
It encourages users to play with the root zone environment via their phone and experiment with the roots like training and pruning with an easy to access front face on the chamber. Honestly growing is so easy, but the biggest potential for yield is via well distributed lighting and well developed roots. Everything else like temp, nutes, humidity are just necessities, but they will never be the key to big/fast yields. But that's just my opinion of course.
From your point of view, you may think this is all well and good, but you've encountered dry spots and reliability issues with nozzles in the past so no doubt you will be pessimistic, but I do appreciate any feedback/concerns you have, because I'm still keen to learn from your experiences anyway.
