Wifey auto/photo experiment

i just started using mine and had some issues and it took me a chat or two with their customer service to figure it out.

the fan speed is not smart. it doesn’t adjust the speed of the fan in relation to how far over or under your temps are. cycle through to the ON setting and see what the fan speed is. i didn’t know but i had it set at 2. in AUTO mode when it got too hot, the max fan speed was 2 which was not enough, so even though it was triggered on, temps didn’t come down enough. i went back to ON mode and bumped up the speed.

it will also turn on the fan if temps or humidity are too low, which could make your problem worse, so if you struggle with low humidity or low temps make sure the bottom of your range for trigger is way way down.

not sure if that’ll help but i just went through all this last few days.

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@Agrestic ahhh okay Awsome I understand the first part about the speed but can you help me with the low settings then please because I’m not quite picking up what your throwing down.

Right now I am struggling with lower humidity and lower Temps.

Im still in veg so can you give me an example / help me out with the low settings please. Thanks in advance.
@Cannabian I have my inkbird but I’m not home till the 12th. To my understanding the inkbird is better but still only monitors temp or humidity for 1 plug.
Why can’t 1 plug monitor both temp and humidity?
Like ideally when I bought it I was hoping to plug the fan in and then have the inkbird monitor high temp and high humidity, whichever set it off first woild kick the fan on (as this woild be ideal for veg with a humidfior running)

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the controller asks you to set ranges. so you say acceptable temperature is 70-80 and acceptable humidity is 50-60. i think it’s intuitive that if your temp hits 81 or humidity hits 61, the fan will kick on to bring things down. but it will also kick on if the temp is 69 or humidity is 49. that could make things worse. my humidity dropped last night and i woke up to the alarm going off because the fan further knocked it down to 30%.

i just dropped my acceptable range to 5% so that it never kicks on with low humidity.

i think how it would help in low humidity is if it was hooked up to supply air and you had it ducted to a humidifier

maybe i’m missing something but that’s my workaround.

aaaand the fan actually just died so now there’s that.

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Perfect timing. I was just about to hook up my fan today, thanks for the insight.

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i’m really not good at reading directions. this may all be in the manual. lol. the kicking on at low values doesn’t make sense to me. need to look into it more, but for now so that i don’t dessicate my grow, i set that humidity level down low low low. i did my first runs just doing it manually and now… i realize how silly that was. as long as your filter has plenty of CFM headroom, this thing works great- esp this time of year when you can have the AC and heat on in the same day (well… i think you’re in CA so maybe not you you).

well, it did work great. i need a new fan. this was awful timing. flipped my plants to 12/12 yesterday and the fan went out 8 hours later. boo. back to the veg tent they go.

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ruminating on your intake and exhaust. if you’re struggling with heat and humidity… i’m thinking it’s better to just vent everything back into the room? if you get a humidifier in there or your plants kick out some humidity through the exhaust, you’d get some of that conditioned air circulated back rather than throwing it out of your house. but i am new at this… struggling with the same thing right now but i’m just going to humidify the whole room and keep the door mostly closed. definitely looking forward to flowering in winter though!

budbrother posted this yesterday for someone on another thread, this is how you could hook a fan up to a DIY humidifier. pretty cool.

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Wow… Yeah see I have the manual sitting beside me and I still didn’t understand it as well as you put it here.
I never though of its other applications and thus why it would be kicking on at low humidity or low Temps.

Sooo I have it all setup wrong and thats probably why it’s just making the issue worse. They should make a YouTube grow tent setup instructional video. Maybe I will once I for sure understand how this works.

@Agrestic your fan died? How long have you had it sheesh it said it should do 50,000 hrs so that’s 4.2 years running 24/7

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we all gotta learn little by little and i finally had to talk directly to them and they got back to me right away. during the summer my fan was running at 10 and not keeping up so using the controller was pointless. but it’s fine because i’m just able to start absorbing more info now. don’t know about you but my brain can only access and handle so much. it’s been a godsend now that the weather changes every 10 minutes and i don’t have adjust manually.

also… the universal controller is NOT universal. that made me mad. there’s a little sticker on the back that says 4" or 6" which i never read since it seemed like one of those dumb stickers that warns you of electrical shock if you decide to take it swimming or something. so don’t interchange them if you have more than one size fan.

the fan only ran a few weeks. the 4" wasn’t enough for my tent last grow (though now realizing it was my filter that was the problem) and i only used it for drying for a week. i’m sure they’ll replace it. some of the LED lights were burned out on my controller and they sent me a new one right away. just of course it’s the weekend so they won’t get my request until Monday.

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Happy Cannaversay @Nicky :grin:

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@Missiles thanks! Didn’t even know what it was that little cake haha

@Agrestic okay I AHD the wifey dial the low’s down to 5 and set the temp at 27c with RH at 80% so I hope that helps. While I was on the phone with her I had the manual out…
Look what I found

It still doesn’t do a great job of explaining how it all works together. I Geuss it would depend on each person’s environment, maybe for someone else turning the fan on sucks in more humid air /warmer air and thus turning the fan on when hitting these low’s would help but that’s definitely a unique situation.
Fingers crossed this does better.
Had a low of 14 last night and a high of 34 so still to cold and to warm haha.

Took the timer right off the 2x4 with the autos and running the fan 24/7 on low for now going to see how it does (until I can get home to setup the inkbird)
The photos are struggling due to environment of course and they don’t seem to like the rich soil (I blame the weak genetics first time I’ve used a legal medical grows genetics and my dad who’s a friend of this grow op said I’ve been growing better bud them him so meh)

No pictures right now but the autos are growing despite the environmental challenges, I’m told one is growing a fair bit faster than the other so we shall see.
Not happy with the grow so far to be honest but that’s why I used leftover seeds I knew dialing in a whole new grow room would take a bit.

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Happy anniversary @Nicky

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LOL i’m still not even sure i understand what those words mean now that i’m seeing them.

but ya they are meant to be hooked up to two fans so one can be used for intake. i think that was the idea. i just pulled the trigger on a room humidifier. they’re not that expensive but i’ve “it’s not that expensive” x100 and now i’m almost to a $0 balance in my bank account.

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@Gremmall thank you!

Haha well your ahead of me I put the 2k to start a new setup on the one credit card and then 12 month Intrest free balance transfered it to another like a game player haha…but that’s so that the wifey can put money in a jar for smoking home herb and use it to pay back the investment. Basically paying her self for better weed.

So the thing means that even if you are on Auto high temp (for example) all the auto highs and low’s will engage it as you explained.
So if it hits your low threshold it will turn it on or highs regardless of what setting your resting your view on.
While I think I understand how it works I just don’t see how that is a smart way to program the controller… (I do like however that now I know it can be tripped by high humidity or high temp and I don’t have to be limited to just one, although would be nice if you could turn the low’s off for example) @Agrestic

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i just turned off my 6” fan and soaked a couple of towels and put them by my passive vents and humidity came up 15% in minutes.

the trigger would help if it was hooked up to the DIY humidifier. but mostly i think it works best when you’re dealing with too high heat and humidity. have an active intake really really knocks everything down. my hvac is so imbalanced i ran an intake duct into the hallway to pull cooler air. i was too intimidated at the time to make it active and hook it up to the controller - stupid, i should have. i had a cheap vivosun that i ran manually for a few hours but it was too strong so i sent it back . but it worked.

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There are a few videos on the Inkbird and some on the AC Infinity. In general, a single fan with either unit can only really deal with one issue at a time. So really, 2 fans are ideal. The inkbird can run 2 at the same time if required. The primary reason the Inkbird is superior is because of the offsets. The AC does not have this feature. As I said before, it is possible with the offset on the Inkbird, to chose either the RH or Temp as the dominant factor and use the offsets to fine tune it so the Rh vents to desired temp range or vise versa, with a single fan. The way you control it is with the fan speed and duration. Obviously not ideal but doable. Needless to say as your plant grows and house temp and RH changes so the settings will need to change.

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I do understand what you mean about the inkbird setting being able to switch on f as n Durring max temp until X temp before shutting off again.

Not sure what offset you mean by bug again I don’t have the controller with me currently.
That being said why would one need to change the variables? As the plant grows humidity will rise (thankfully because I need it right now) and eventually when its high but I’m going into flower I can have the controller monitor RH and kick on when the humidity rises to high as well as the temp (at least with the AC controller so I assume as well with the inkbird)

Both of you are saying and intake fan is ideal but why it seems like more of a hassle unless your trying to pull something in (like maybe your tent has a lower RH then the room it’s in)
I looked at a whole room humidifier but I want to try and limit the space I take up so I’m going to get anther 4L one that is an evaporative type that goes in the new tent.

It will all change once the second compartment has more plants in it (going to grow some herbs and maybe some lettus or Veggies)

What I’m trying to say is, in the beginning the RH will likely not be the main issue because there isn’t much plant transpiration taking place, so heat will be the primary reason to ventilate right? So I use heat as the prime motivator. When I set the offsets ( spread ) for my heat I try to do it so that I can vent off some humidity if that’s a problem. The closer I set the spread on the Inkbird the more frequently it vents. The wider I set it the longer heat and humidity can build. I can further play with that by increasing or decreasing the speed if the fan, thus exchanging air faster or slower. Its crude but it kinda works.
As the plant material increases the focus will switch from Heat to humidity, so RH becomes the motivator. I will set the RH to vent within excepted range and also as often as needed to keep temp in range.
So you can see now what I mean by ( as the plant grows you need to adjust stuff with a single fan )

Yeah I see what you mean, kinda… Lol
Like I totally understand the concept and I get that with the fan I can’t control the spread.
The fan can however (now that we have learned) control temp & RH highs kicking in whichever sets it off first.

So I would think one would really only have to switch the highs from veg/flower (being that we want higher RH in veg of course)

Yep, and that’s kinda where the Inkbird has the advantage, albeit a small one.

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Update from the wifey
Looks like slowly dialing it in better but still getting a little cooler than ide like at night and to hot Durring peak time (whenever that is).

The photos are getting beat up, raised light and its sitting at 22" lights are a bit over half strength I think but they are just having a hard time with the rich soil and high temp I believe.
The autos don’t seem to really care they are doing well even though they are in the near same environment.
Autos growing well at 27 days


Photos struggling…and going to get the girlfriend to attempt to sex them this weekend (that sounds kinky)


Not reading TDS out as it’s to early to care and my TDS is in 160-180

When I’m home I will have to create a simple way for the wifey to understand mixing the dry nutes so I’m brain storming on that right now

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