Haunted Basement ARDUINO Vert Insanity

[VAtransplant]

Figured I'd start here since I still have a lot of work to do, and until it's set up perfectly, I'll be working and making changes. Haven't done a run til harvest in well over a year so I'm gonna do it up as much as I can. This will end up being an enormous post so consider it reference for others.

Anyway, brief explanation - moved in to a new apartment and have landlords blessing to grow, which he mentioned in casual conversation without even knowing that I grew. Hell, I don't even smoke more than a single puff of a jay per month these days. Plus, legal in Colorado helps.

This place was built in the 1890's and was converted in to a triplex, but I'm the only unit with a basement... unfortunately filled with low hanging pipes and only 76" tall - so my prized secret jardin DR120's wouldn't fit down there. I moved the veg tent, set up some ventilation, and let clones recover from the neglect and stretch at old apartment. Tonight I grabbed a new tent, HTG Supply Original Stacker (39.75" x 39.75" x 60") and set to work getting it roughly rigged up. Much to do still. For the record, I don't have much great to say about the Agromax tents but I wasn't about to hacksaw my jardin poles... and actually my Agromax veg tent has worked fine for the two years I've owned it, just kinda crappy.

Equipment:
- Agromax Original Stacker (flower), Agromax Mother Keeper (veg)
- 600w Apollo HPS for flower, 220w T5HO for veg
- CanMAX 6" 3 speed fan
- Additional VARIAC speed controller to further dial down fan (works awesome)
- CanLite 6x24 Scrubber, old and probably worthless at this point
- Arduino rig
- Blumats

Arduino is awesome, I write software for a living so this was a natural progression and helped me maintain my vegging at old apartment (which I never got to flower for during the entire lease, sigh). I control the light based on temperature and have a lot of other pieces still in moving boxes to reincorporate. Several probes for temperature, and temperature/humidity combo probes, wired to a 4 outlet power panel with relays controlling each outlet. The rocker switches on front are manual overrides to disable a device. All of this submits to the internet so I can check my temperatures from work and flip things on or off manually. Hell, I even wrote a little desktop widget to give me constant monitoring.

Arduino also controls a pump for mixing up nutes periodically in a reservoir that I fill to right around 7 gallons... may upsize soon. My humidity seems stable at about 35-40% in basement so I doubt I'll mess with that, it's futile in Colorado anyway in my experiences. Lastly, I have a pretty torquey servo that I'll mount upside down over the speed controller knob, and a second servo on a damper somewhere in the exhaust. This will be closed all summer I'm sure, but it's nice in the winter to not only slow down or turn off your fan, but recirculate air in the room to maintain a temp down 0.1 degree precision.

Alright - pictures. Forgive me, these are the worst pictures I've posted on a log here and I have logs dating back to like '09. All my digital cameras are still in moving boxes somewhere. More to follow, need to flip the switch on flower ASAP so I'll get my light from storage unit tomorrow and finalize some more stuff / clean up kinks in duct, etc.

New tent and a bag of crap from HTG Supply... love having them 10 minutes from my house.

Looking down to the dungeon, terrible and awkward stairwell, steep, varying distance between steps. Not very safe.

Variac, wireless router running DD-WRT firmware to act as a bridge and provide ethernet connectivity to my Arduino. Also in the background is part of what makes this basement hauntedcreepylicious, though it gets worse.

This part of the basement actually terrifies me, I was not enthusiastic snapping this photo. Apparently the original apartment had a court yard thing in the middle. It was completely bricked in at some point, so it's essentially a hidden room.. at least 12x12 feet big. The only access is through a knocked out section of brick the size of my body, I'm not sure I'll ever venture in there. Certainly could fit both of my secret jardins in there but ehhg, would need some serious air filtering and exhaust run would be ridiculous back out through this hole (meaning I couldn't fit back in)

Arduino and 4 switch power panel, super easy to wire the relays to this panel. I have an 8 switch one identical to this one which I'll switch out in the next few days as I predict I'll need it now with two tents to manage.

 

[VAtransplant]

Here's a close up of the arduino screen. I have some cheapo switches on the front to toggle through various pages, but I really just do most of the viewing on my phone or computer.

Moving on, this is what I started out with tonight (just a cramped area of storage and my veg tent).

After assembling new tent, moving old one, and hooking up exhaust... roughly. I'm doing something I've done in the past and hope to have success with, still... which is connecting the flower tent to the veg tent, and just extracting from the flower tent. The negative pressure in flower tent will pull air through veg - hopefully adequate enough. I'll only flower at night so hopefully I won't be combating too much extra heat. If so, I'll only run two of the four bulbs on the veg light.

So some neglect at my old apartment vegging these plants + overvegging here at the new place has resulted in MONSTERS. It's going to be a disaster when I flower, but I gotta clear out some girls ASAP. I have 9 in the tent and another 3 mums leftover in bigger pots, and 3 others in small cups to be put outside or something. Everyone has had a bit of underwatering in the last two weeks and some leaf die off has occurred by the way.

Said leftovers. Anyway, that's all for tonight. Bummer after all these years IC still has max image thing on posts. Be back later!

 

[The Gator]

That is a creepy basement, but it has some cool structure, im a fan of exposed brick. I've never heard of that Arduino system, I have to look into it, sounds very cool. Im interested to see how this room evolves

 

[Schwarzenbart]

Bumpity bump

View Image

Here's a close up of the arduino screen. I have some cheapo switches on the front to toggle through various pages, but I really just do most of the viewing on my phone or computer.

View Image

Moving on, this is what I started out with tonight (just a cramped area of storage and my veg tent).

View Image

After assembling new tent, moving old one, and hooking up exhaust... roughly. I'm doing something I've done in the past and hope to have success with, still... which is connecting the flower tent to the veg tent, and just extracting from the flower tent. The negative pressure in flower tent will pull air through veg - hopefully adequate enough. I'll only flower at night so hopefully I won't be combating too much extra heat. If so, I'll only run two of the four bulbs on the veg light.

View Image

So some neglect at my old apartment vegging these plants + overvegging here at the new place has resulted in MONSTERS. It's going to be a disaster when I flower, but I gotta clear out some girls ASAP. I have 9 in the tent and another 3 mums leftover in bigger pots, and 3 others in small cups to be put outside or something. Everyone has had a bit of underwatering in the last two weeks and some leaf die off has occurred by the way.

View Image

Said leftovers. Anyway, that's all for tonight. Bummer after all these years IC still has max image thing on posts. Be back later!

 

[JointOperation]

o wow.. i would really start clearing out that 12x12 spot... and reinforcing the walls around it so no1 else could break threw the brick to get in.. and then setup my grow in there. and put up a nice wall/door or just a wall on hinges .. with an electronic or magnetic opener so no1 could pull it open without finding the switch or button that de magnetizes the magnets to allow it to come off.

man id be working my ass off getting that to be my grow lol.. just so i could save space and use the space in the basement lol.

 

[VAtransplant]

Man, I suck... still need to set up the HPS and put on timer, and start temperature logging in flower tent. Been storming here in Denver every day as I'm driving home from work, and lasting all night, so I've lacked the motivation to go drive up to my storage unit and old apartment and gather all the loose ends.

Gator, the Arduino system is pretty awesome.. basically $20 gets you a tiny little circuit board about the size of a cigarette pack. $15 on Amazon gets you 4 temperature/humidity combo probes, and a couple regular (more accurate) temperature only probes. A few minutes of soldering following one of the billions of guides online and you've got yourself a unit capable of responding to environmental conditions. A 4 relay board (each 10 amps) can be connected with a few jumper wires and wala, you have a setup capable of controlling things based on environmental variables. The code is simple too, again, tons of tutorials online. Then you can go fancier with a $10 screen, or a $10 ethernet shield to get the data online. Definitely research if you're the DIY type and don't want to spend hundreds (or more) for hobby-specific controller.

Joint - I'd love to grow in that creepy area, but there's no exhaust option except through the same hole I'd have to access it in. Crawling up there regularly would also suck, and it's terrifying inside. Dunno where I'd source fresh air nor exhaust hot air to. No need for wall reinforcement or anything though, my neighbors wouldn't knock down their walls to get inside Young couples, all party and either smoke or are entirely cool with it... hard to not find that here in Colorado. The secret room's floor is about 6 feet above the basement level (again, room used to be a courtyard), so no door could be put in, you just have to crawl up at an angle from the basement. Don't think the landlord would want me knocking down the wall in my apartment to access it

Back soon with lighting shots, thank god the weekend has arrived.

 

[The Gator]

Gator, the Arduino system is pretty awesome.. basically $20 gets you a tiny little circuit board about the size of a cigarette pack. $15 on Amazon gets you 4 temperature/humidity combo probes, and a couple regular (more accurate) temperature only probes. A few minutes of soldering following one of the billions of guides online and you've got yourself a unit capable of responding to environmental conditions. A 4 relay board (each 10 amps) can be connected with a few jumper wires and wala, you have a setup capable of controlling things based on environmental variables. The code is simple too, again, tons of tutorials online. Then you can go fancier with a $10 screen, or a $10 ethernet shield to get the data online. Definitely research if you're the DIY type and don't want to spend hundreds (or more) for hobby-specific controller.

Thanks for the info, I will keep that in mind!

Joint - I'd love to grow in that creepy area, but there's no exhaust option except through the same hole I'd have to access it in. Crawling up there regularly would also suck, and it's terrifying inside. Dunno where I'd source fresh air nor exhaust hot air to. No need for wall reinforcement or anything though, my neighbors wouldn't knock down their walls to get inside Young couples, all party and either smoke or are entirely cool with it... hard to not find that here in Colorado. The secret room's floor is about 6 feet above the basement level (again, room used to be a courtyard), so no door could be put in, you just have to crawl up at an angle from the basement. Don't think the landlord would want me knocking down the wall in my apartment to access it

That small area sounds like the torment of Tantalus, the man cursed to reach for water but always flowed away. If you could figure that place out, it sounds like the perfect hiding spot.