interesting, after all the effort developing and time invested
you think you will still be coming out cheaper?
factor, parts x3 = labor

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Am I missing the DIY part or is it just over my head? I would really like to add computer monitoring, but what specifically would one need and what steps must be taken to make it work?

This type of stuff (on the DIY level anyhow) is still new and basically you're going to need to hack a bunch of different products and services together to get it going, and even then it will need a lot of research and testing... The more people involved with such a project the better, as it can become quite costly buying parts that MAY OR MAY NOT work.

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Regarding the above post.... you don't HAVE to hack a bunch of things together, you COULD go buy grow automation systems... but they will set you back a great deal. I think this would be a fun thing for the community (or at least the technically inclined portion) to work together and figure out.

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I have some 100k thermistors on order, since i'll be using my dataq box, and that's what they recommend on their web site. When they come in, my project will start with temperature, and I'll see if I can get useable TDS readings by shoving steel spikes into the water in my hydro tank. If nothing else, i should be able to set it to alarm when my water level goes low.

Great thread.
I think the EC meter needs an AC source to work as a DC source will polarise. By that I mean the spikes will get covered in charged ions and will stop working. Perhaps takin apart an old meter wouod be the easiest way if you can find a way to get the correct connections from the meter and connect them to your ADC. Whatever I wish u all the luck

thermistors arrived. slogging through dataq documentation. decisions, decisions
I'll probably just start with windaq lite, and then snoop the port, from qbasic, VB, or Visual c++, or just hook up the RDP as GrowTech suggested. I'd like to eventually get email alert and phone call if something happens. (Active WebCam can email on motion detection, as previously stated) Tired, thoughts disjointed. sleep calls.

I noticed you were talking about galvanic moisture monitoring, this isn't exactly the best way to do it, as you will slowly leech minerals from the rods into the soil. I found this link to a DIY Moisture Sensor (resistive) after searching for a replacement for one I used at a friends house that I was going to hack, but now I make my own! How to make a cheap soil moisture sensor | The Cheap Vegetable Gardener

This is the nice thing about know the technicalities of electronics, you can build this entire thing from scratch, cheaply, like I am doing, even to the point of having active cellular reporting with MMS if I needed. If you are going to make your monitoring application network friendly, I would suggest using a non normal port and then just opening it in your firewall/router. Setup your application, when working over a network, to use sessions that people have to log in to, and after x minutes of inactivity by the user, they are logged out.

So the person would log in, they would be given a session id, and every time they sent a command, it would be prefaced by the session id.

I have bought most of the parts for my grow box, I am doing a recirculating DWC, and since I am an EET, I want to automate it as much as possible. That isn't to say that I won't do things manually, but the option to have automation would be nice. I will build it so everything is manual at first, then slowly integrate my automation parts.

On the monitoring side I am going to be monitoring water temperature (res and grow chamber), grow chamber air temperature, relative humidity, continuous pH, continuous TDS, CO2, and a camera.

On the control side I will be controlling a DIY water cooling device including a water pump and a TEC, the lighting, intake fan, exhaust fan, air pump, recirculating pump, and hopefully a DIY dehumidifier.

The brain is going to be a PIC Microcontroller with a Graphical LCD interface and a 4x4 keypad. I will also have a wireless (ZigBee) connection to my PC. I also hope to add a small UPS, so everything but the lights will run off of it.

I have pretty much all the parts I need for automation, I still need to get some contactors for switching the heavy loads (like the lights), and I still need to buy a continuous pH probe which is about $90

I got my thermistors, mounted them on the end of some phone cords (10-12 ft each) and I potted the ends with epoxy putty. hooked them up to my dataq D-194RS logger, and tried to calibrate (fresh install of windows 2000, install file from the dataq site called "new194.exe" then i attempted to calibrate, using tepid water as the "high" control, and icewater as the "low" control. this seemed to work ok at first, but the two sensors began showing temps up to 10 degrees difference. my guess is, that water infiltrated the epoxy putty on one of the sensors, allowing some current to cross the leads. maybe this will work out when they're both dry, but this means to me, that epoxy putty may be a sub-optimal solution if you intend to use the sensors in a wet application, such as a hydro tank. Once I have two demonstrably working sensors, I will work on viewing them remotely. They've been drying for a little while, and now they're only 3 degrees apart. much better, but not great agreement. here is a screen cap from about 15 mins ago (no, there isn't, the screen cap wouldn't resize properly to a size RIU would accept

You can get K-Type thermocouples off of eBay incredibly cheap, like, less than $5 each. At least -50C to 250C, perfect for this kind of application.

You can use them in water too, they generate a voltage based on temperature. The only problem I can for see is that they usually output a small voltage, like uV/C.