Ability to raise and lower light via smartphone?

I also posted this in “grow room design and set up” but now I’m thinking I might get a better response from here. So here it goes....

So I know there’s some smart mofos on here and need your guys help. I wanna set up a WiFi hoist system so I can raise and lower my lights via smart phone. I’m doing some experimenting on setting up a fully remote controlled room. So far I can’t find any kind of lift system besides this sun hoist (pic below). Now this system works via Bluetooth. So my idea was to get a Bluetooth gateway so that it could be controlled with my phone. Unless anyone knows of a system that runs on WiFi that has the ability to do this. Any ideas would be greatly appreciated

max316420 said:

I also posted this in “grow room design and set up” but now I’m thinking I might get a better response from here. So here it goes....

So I know there’s some smart mofos on here and need your guys help. I wanna set up a WiFi hoist system so I can raise and lower my lights via smart phone. I’m doing some experimenting on setting up a fully remote controlled room. So far I can’t find any kind of lift system besides this sun hoist (pic below). Now this system works via Bluetooth. So my idea was to get a Bluetooth gateway so that it could be controlled with my phone. Unless anyone knows of a system that runs on WiFi that has the ability to do this. Any ideas would be greatly appreciated

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You could get a Raspberry pi and control via bluetooth; connect to Rpi with wifi. Using the Rpi will let you control everything from lights to watering etc. I recommend using Mycodo. The developer is awesome and i'm sure he would through together a library for the hoist.

That my limited 2 cents.

Could you not use a smart switch controlling a momentary switch controlled to some form of timer module? I’m sure it would take a bit of messing around to get your lift points and drop points correct. But I’m sure it would be far more cost effective then buying an electric hoist controlled by wifi? After reviewing your post a few days ago, I got stumbling around and looking on amazon and found some switches and so on for very cheap and think I may try the same thing out with a 12v winch I have, small of course. I am on the road a lot and have my lights set up threw my smart phone and a camera for viewing my room as well. All cheap but pretty cool stuff to tinker with. Keep us updated with your progress

If you get a motorized winch or whatever I dunno I bet you could find something for 50$? If so I bet you can do it. I’m going to do it one day

If you try to use a winch, watch out for the amp draw.

I would use an ESP32.
You can connect to it with your phone either with wifi or bluetooth.
Hook the ESP32 to a stepper motor/drive unit, maybe a geneva mechanism if you're worried about the motors drawing power at idle.
You should also have enough pins on the ESP32 left over to control your light, fans, and to give you some basic senor readings.

Desmondg said:

If you try to use a winch, watch out for the amp draw.

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I decided to use the winch for my trellis for my set up, I did end up getting a 30amp 12volt power supply, the winch says it can draw up to 40 but it is a 1500 lb winch so I am assuming that is on a heavy pull I think this will be fairly light for it. I am just trying to figure out my lifting points now to make it lift straight in 4 corners at the same time

Hippieryan said:

I decided to use the winch for my trellis for my set up, I did end up getting a 30amp 12volt power supply, the winch says it can draw up to 40 but it is a 1500 lb winch so I am assuming that is on a heavy pull I think this will be fairly light for it. I am just trying to figure out my lifting points now to make it lift straight in 4 corners at the same time

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This seems pretty easy to impliment.

A simple rotary encoder could track the rotations of the spindle in a motorised setup. Shouldn't need to get super complicated if one knows a bit of programming.

nunyabidness420 said:

This seems pretty easy to impliment.

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Very cool