The arduiana (arduino + marijuana) curing machine

Hey guys, so after 3 grow seasons I'm finally standing tall on what I'm calling the Arduiana. I haven't really got to use it to get my bud all the way to the bowl, but its all about to change today, when my 28byj stepper motors come in.
So what is this thing? Well, it consists of a vacuum pump and a Baine Marie pot with an automatic lid controlled by arduino. You put your bud into the pot, put it in the machine. Next thing that happens is the lid closes and the pump starts dehydrating the bud. Using a vacuum is an optimal method because it pulls out moisture from the center of the bud to the surface. I'm using some ozone to tap down on the mold, which the adage of "the toxicity is in the dose" does not apply, any amount of moldy weed will wreck your brain.
Where I'm at right now is I have 3 mommas ready to go and all i need to do is put in some replacement stepper motors tonight. I'm using an LCD and a rotary encoder to get things done (for right now). Basically you just scroll down to the menu option to start, and with the lid closed it'll start pulling vacuum down to 4 or 5 psi and keep it there for about 5 minutes, then it'll wait about an hour to start again. I'm thinking about 10 seconds of ozone once every cycle will be enough to keep mold away. I did get to test the ozone function last year before my battery ran out and turned my last plant harvest into zombie weed.
So obviously there's allot more coding work to get done. I'm also using a load cell (weight sensor) below the pot to measure how much water has evaporated. That along with the humidity sensor should be enough to fine tune the curing process. Beyond that I have to develop and debug the code for closing the lid automatically. But the menu system is as good as it needs to be.
Before I redesign the Arduiana into something field ready I'm gonna put up a website at www.arduiana.com pretty soon. I'm going to be looking for a handful of people interested in getting there own machine. I'm not really an electronics person per se, I studied biology in college, but I learned how to do all this stuff because I wanted to use my degree for something. That was like 6 years ago. Since 2020 I've been actively developing it when I quit my long time job for app jobs. You can read more about me at
www.bellwether.arduiana.com

Thanks guys!

The fusion 360 model

What's that ozone gonna do to the terps and cannabinoids ?

Unga Bunga said:

What's that ozone gonna do to the terps and cannabinoids ?

Click to expand...

I'm not really sure. I figure that it'll probably work out once the correct dosage is worked out. You only really need it after the second day, the plant starts losing its defenses against the mold. But then again once I get the right design the lid can open automatically and let out the stale air. I put a little fan in the lid too, but forgot to pull its wires through when I put it together. Oh well. I fucked up allot on making this first model. I thought I had it working for me but it kept on getting hung up on the i2c line with another arduino measuring the weight. Then my pinch valve servo just stopped working and I can't replace it for another two days. And I already harvested one of the three plants! So I'm just gonna redesign the PCB while I wait and try again next week.

Got two more lady's to do my thing with. And a new pcb for the cnc.
The tall plant was injured as a seedling and I just figured I'd keep it around. Lo and behold, she just shoot up taller than any auto I've ever grown.
So this new pcb should fix my woes of late. It has 4 stepper motor connectors, 4 i2c lines, 12v and 5v terminals, a stepper motor driver (the unipolar A4988 driving 4 bipolar 28byj motors), and a rotary encoder... all fitted on a 70 by 100mm pcb. Only took me 4 hours at the coffee shop.

I just ran the first program through the arduiana, and I really like the precision timing of the different components. First the 200mA air pump turns on and the 9 gram servo motor pinches closed the 12v ozone generators' tubing and it sucks the old air out. Then the pinch valve opens and the ozone generator turns on for 10 seconds. The whole thing stops for about one minute before repeating.
I put just a few grams of my autoflower plant into the TEC chamber this morning and found that it was already too dry by the time I got home. I throw them into the arduiana and found the buds are at 70% moisture content already. So I made up this quick program to see if everything works, and it does! I'm gonna have to say I have made my commintment to get this harvest in this year. It has been a wild ride! Things took a turn when I smoked moldy weed last year (weed I've since dubbed zombie weed) after reading that yes, you could smoke it in smaller amounts. But that is very, very false! Luckily I took precautions before putting my bud at risk this year and haven't had an issue. Last year, I lost almost every plant over 2 harvests.

Finally got the arduiana free-standing, just plugged into 12v. Right now its just drying some popcorn buds...
I made a menu system where it stays on a homescreen (with weight, humidity, temp, pressure, and the y= thing is tell me how many cycles the pump went through) until you touch the rotary encoder, and then the backlight comes on and you have some options to scroll through, for accessing the lid and air pump and the pinch valve. But you actually turn on the machine by long pressing the rotary encoder. For right now I have it setup to turn on once every 3 hours and spit about 10 seconds worth of ozone into the vacuum chamber. I actually couldn't get the arduiana to hold a vacuum but just turning on the pump drops down the humidity levels.
Also, I took down my last plant just in time to see both of these machines in action. I really appreciate hanging the buds upside down like this, which is the best part of the box for right now. I couldn't find my 2 wire temp sensors I had so I can't test whether I could maintain a certain humidity level by keeping the TEC at a certain temperature. But that isn't really a problem unless you have allot of bud in there. One main concern of the TEC box is that I cannot get the humidity up past 60 or 70%. I really wanted it to saturate then turn on the TEC and dehumidify it. I think it might be the foam sucking up the moisture.

So, it took allot of long nights to get in this one harvest, but I think I'm all set to have a relatively easy time for the next harvest, which i just planted 5 more autoflowers. I plan on redesigning everything using what I know now, and then its on to the big times.