Automated grow light lifter..

Mechanical

Well-Known Member

Well I lost the ability to grow a long time ago due to an ex that was watching my plants while I was away at work. The watering was automated but I needed her to keep my lights at the right height for me. We split up, she threatened to call the cops, and that was the end of it. So instead of completely getting out of the game, I decided to use my love of growing to help others that might be in my shoes. I figured that things like the ph of solutions can be automated so why not lights. I've read plenty of posts about people not knowing what to do when they have to unexpectedly leave their plants unattended or want to grow but their jobs don't allow them to. They either risk burning plants or lifting their lights too high and having a lot of stretch and bad node spacing. I can see it helping the elderly that don't have the energy to be moving lights all the time.
I only built one for a small light(cause that's all I had after I got rid of everything) but it will work for any sized light. I spent a lot of time trying to figure out how to do it. After about 5 failures and lots of speed bumps, this is what I came up with. It's been working for about a month now and has had 0 issues. It's been purposely dropped to see if anything happens(which caused super anxiety) and everything fired right back up. Let me know what y'all think.
 

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Nice. I had a 8 pairs of reflectors mounted to 10' pieces of unistrut hung by aircraft cable mounted to cheap Chinese winches. I used 6 Allen Bradley reflective sensors(emitter receiver) to control the height control, and used proximity sensors that see positioned lugs on the aircraft cable to control where the winch stops.
I know over engineered and I should of used simple garage door safety sensors...lol
If you know what your doing its pretty easy and thanks to eBay you can source industrial control for a fraction of what its worth.

You should look into marketing that, looks awesome!
 
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