Arduino Controlled Grow and PC Program - Work In Progress

Nice work - and good hit on the one-wire. I've been planning on using one-wire for temperature and recently found ones for humidity. That and an LCD screen for the local-access - and maybe an ethernet shield for remote as well. SSRs

For the relays - if you run them well under capacity you should be fine. Also if they're rated for motor start the specs will tell you - that is if you can get specs.

If you switch to SSRs be sure to properly heat sink them. Perhaps more a note to others that might not know. That 30A SSR is probably only rated at that with a decent heat sink. Not a bad deal - but it's probably only good for 5A (100% duty) w/o heat sink. Also for SSRs (which I didn't see in your wiring box photo) remember that they also can fail shorted / closed circuit. In fact - I've had two PID controllers on epoxy curing ovens go open-loop. Alarm lights blinking on the controller all the while the embedded SSR was letting everything run. Not fun when the wife mentioned "Honey, you might want to look at this, you've got smoke coming out of your curing oven" Too close to having a fire. Fool me twice and now I use a water heater safety thermostat. If you look at your top element - there's an extra red button. That is a 180F safety cut off. If it cuts off - it requires manual reset. Since it's not normally switching it doesn't wear out either. Good safety. And still it's tripped for me too - like when I was too clever and added a 7W "always on inspection light" that - very slowly - got the temps high and the PID controller wasn't in that loop . Look for all traps! So relay or SSR - anything with heat add something with a manual reset hard cutoff. If you want - put a very low wattage bulb in parallel with it and it'll be your "oh-crap" indicator

Good work - and keep it up. At this point I'll probably end up using 80-90% of your work.

Glad you like you the work so far. I haven't had much time to work on it lately, but hopefully I'll update it again here this week. There's a few little bugs I squashed already, but not much for a new release. So maybe the weekend?

Cheers.

Alpha 10 up
- Load all Email Settings, Devices, SetPoints, Timers
- Diagnostic Analog Values Fixed

Alpha 11 up
- Auto Load Settings fixes some issues.
- Fixed Status Labels
- Minor changes

Still following. Been looking through my stuff for some electrostatic mass flow meters and pressure gates I've used for controls to see what I might do here. Worse case its inspiring me that all those things that had to be checked from simple serial daisy chains of past can now be sent to a phone etc. Thankfully its simple serial outs of the couple that have the ability.

Course I need to find the time as well ...

Cheers.

Great work! Your project finally pushed me over the edge. I've been wanting to experiment with room automation using arduino for awhile, just started ordering parts. Awesome job, keep it up!

Thanks for the support guys... It seems to be coming along pretty good.

Alpha 12 up
- Can Load / Save Settings
- Fixed 'second' timers

psari said:

Course I need to find the time as well ...

Click to expand...

True 'dat'

Dude this is amazing, will read the whole post !

Great thread man, really selfless stuff you're doing for others - great karma to you, friend

Interesting, I'm using an arduino ethermega board myself and bought some 2.4ghz transceiver modules, real time clock module, a ph sensor and some opamps to increase the ph sensors v range. My biggest debacle is getting auto mixers / pumps to do the auto mixing job. I figure I will keep it purely diagnostic except for the light schedules. Not sure about building in http firmware or not or do I keep it USB and let my vb.net app do all the work.

I've coded up a web server that displays all the sensor values and can be ran on any port but have not added control buttons for the webpage yet. I understand your reasoning to keep the coded mostly on the arduino itself but I also like the fact of being able to do a little more with a PC... I might release that version sometime soon, but I have mostly coded the project during a break in my schedule and don't know if I'll have much time to update as often as I'd like. None the less, the project is in working condition; but you'll probably have to end up hacking the settings and lab databases in Access.

Alpha 13 up
- Added a webserver that displays all sensor values.

Warning: Alpha 14 will include the ability to change the webserver options, but right now it is setup to automatically run upon starting the program on port 8091.

Too see your sensor values just goto: http://127.0.0.1:8091

This is awesome! I just got my first arduino and an ethernet shield this week. I can't wait to start playing.

I also received an ethernet shield this week. lol Since the firmata source is made for serial communication I have yet to try and 'port' it for ethernet comm's. But I briefly looked through the ethernet library's available and they have similar commands. Should be fairly easy. Ordered up a mega too... $30, why not?

AdvancedNewbie, is there any possibility that a total programming idiot like myself could get anything out of this?

I write VBA pretty well for Excel and have some SQL experience, but the shit I read in this thread is so far over my head it's ridiculous.

Is there any way that you (or someone else, perhaps) could point a tard like me in the direction of what I would need to buy and what programs I would need to understand? Perhaps an "Arduino for Dummies" type book to get me up to speed?

Really interested in this technology and the ability to control my grow remotely but don't even know where to get started.

Well, if you're not into editing code, the download includes the program itself so you can just run the program. As for the arduino; I'm not really sure... Sometimes I check youtube for anything similar to what I'm doing but it usually doesn't explain very well, but atleast it gives you ideas. There are other sites... But the arduino code is C++ and any book you find on C++ will basically be the same. C++ for dumimes is even a good start. As for Visual Basic, I would recommend downloading some simple programs off of www.planet-source-code.com or a similar site, but that VBA experience should help. I use Visual Studio 2010 to code, so a copy of that would help. As for programming the arduino, there's an programming environment on arduino's website you can download. Again, whenever I want to know something specific I just google it.

The arduino has Digital Pins which are like light switches, 'on' or 'off'. When they're on, the pin supplies 5V. With this 5V you can do anything from lighting up an LED to switching a 120V relay to blowing up fireworks.

The analog pins are like your inputs. A sensor usually has three wires and acts like a resisitor; varying the the amount of resistance changes the voltage. The three wires are ground, 5V and then the output which would go to an analog pin. The analog pin reads the voltage 0V to 5V and this varying voltage corresponds to a sensor value which could be something like "530" when it's 3V (don't know for sure). Since sometimes, say, a temperature sensor might return 2V when it's 70 degrees, and 4V when it's 90 degrees (and all variances in between). That is why a calculation is required to convert the raw analog signal values into something usable like a temperature read-out. This is basically what my program does, then does operations based on the post-calculated value. So "If the Temperature Sensor value goes over 82 then switch digital pin 1" (which is hooked up to a 120V relay, which is hooked up to an 120V outlet, which a fan is plugged into) or whatever you want really.

This is just a crude explanation; but I hope it gets you started.

AdvanacedNewbie, Great explanation! I'm certainly a newbie at this level of diy electronics, but not to hardware design. I have 23 years experience laying out circuit boards. My electrical engineering resources are endless.

I'm certain I'll refer to your work from the start. Thanks for sharing your experience and knowledge with us all.

Regards

Reading a message like that never gets old... It's no problem. I'm glad I can help. I just can't believe a simple environment controller costs over $800. Especially when you can build one with more features for ~$120. Thanks for the support guys - its what keeps a project going.

Yeah, yeah, I didn't turn my lights my off and some are blurry.



22 Days = 3.142857142857143 weeks in!