The Traveling Grower - The Struggle From the Road

I found a guy who built is own EC meter with Arduino:

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I think the stuff is out there, cost is probably the biggest hurdle. Turning lights and fans on/off fairly simple. Measuring nutes at the scale we do probably quite a bit more difficult.

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Too time consuming and complicated for the $20 it costs to buy a meter

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But my meter won’t report the data to my phone and alert me if there is an issue. :wink:

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Very few issues which don’t take time to develop aside from pumps dying or leaks most issues happen over hours ppm drops and changes are easy to notice with a daily check
Though at -14f with -27f windchill I could easily resist urge to go check my ladies today :wink:

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Which is great when I am home - unfortunately I travel a lot for work (hence the title). The way I look at it is… what can I reasonably ask my wife to do when I’m away. I think I can expect her to react if there is a problem but I don’t expect her to be very proactive in the care and feeding of my garden.

In any case a PPM sensor/meter would be the last thing on my priority list for this stuff. I’m more concerned with automating safety features for extreme issues like 90F temps.

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Look into pool automation systems. I have a friend who has a pool system that adjusts pH and chlorine levels via inline droppers and sensors. So as the pump is running, it is constantly sampling the levels in the pool and adjusting via additions from reservoirs of acid and chlorine. This is basically what you’re looking to do except with different inputs and readings.

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That’s a common line of thinking for hydro growers. :slight_smile: The PH one isn’t too difficult because it’s binary - just two solutions and they aren’t mixed together.

PPM is a whole different beast because we can have many different nutes at different stages, each plant might have its own requirements, etc…

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Obviously the easiest thing to do would be to grow outdoors in the ground. I will likely leave my 6 summer plants for weeks at a time without my attention. The soil is pretty rich and they’ll be on drip irrigation. Lighting is covered by that nuclear reactor in the sky.

But I get that’s not the goal here. :grinning:

I am going to try and grow outside this year, but I don’t have high hopes. I don’t have a green thumb so hydro appeals to me because I can control most of the variables. It seems simpler to the way my brain works.

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Ppm drift is simply part of hydro and is gonna be one of those psionic activities (gotta do it after looking at everything).

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Good morning all!

Today marks the second day of week 8 of flower. It is the 129th day since the seeds sprouted, the 67th day since the lights were switched to 12/12, and the 51st day since I first noticed flowers.

Didn’t do a lot today - plucked some leaves, adjusted PH, and that’s it. The GL PH crashed hard again - 5.2 today. I double checked everything and guess what? I left the water heaters unplugged after I did the reservoir change on Sunday. Plugged them back in this morning so we will see what the PH is tomorrow and the next day by comparison.

GL PH adjusted from 5.2 to 5.80 and a PPM of 888. SSH PH adjusted from 5.75 to 5.9 and a PPM of 650.

What I did do today was take a bazillion pics.

I have noticed on the SSH I have a few leaves turning purple on me:

Other than that nothing really new to report.

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She might be asking for P…

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Seems likely. I’ve had her on a 1000-1300 ppm feeding schedule for the past 4-5 weeks and this week I stopped feeding Liquid Koolbloom (0-10-10). She was given the following on Sunday (per gallon):

5ml Micro
15ml Bloom
2.5ml Calmag
6ml FloraNectar

leaves turning color is just normal don’t do anything means they are happy fall colors is what you should expect when plants come to the end

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This is my train of thought - I’m 2 days into week 8 so I’m just keeping the ship on the current heading for another couple of weeks.

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Beautiful garden amigo! Is the gl still throwing out a bunch of pistils, or are those ssh colas just getting bigger?

That’s the reason for the word “might” lol.

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I don’t think there are too many new pistils on the GL but it’s really hard to tell because there are so many already… I don’t think the SSH colas are getting bigger at this point, although it has thrown out a bunch of new pistils in the past few days. I have removed some fan leaves so it’s probably an optical illusion. :slight_smile: That being said it definitely added a bunch of weight over the past week IMHO. If she finishes right where she’s at now I’ll be happy.

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Gotcha. I’ve been trying to follow closely, still hard to tell when something looks different. Just looked like some really big buds with fresh pistils. Wasn’t sure what I was looking at is all.

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