DeadlyFoez
Active member
**Editted to add more good info**
Ok, So I've been working on building this system for quite some time. I've spent maybe about $3000 in total on this including nutrients and mistakes I've made.
My cabinet features the Growtronix computer controlled grow system. I've got Growtronix controlling everything including light cycles, ph levels, temperature, humidity and music.
To start, before I put the cabinet together I used spray on adhesive to line all my boards with 2 mil mylar. I used 3/8" sanded plywood for the back and mylared that also.
I picked up some 5/8" wide rolls of felt at my local dollar store (BigLots) and I glued and tacked it on at any place that needed it to block the light from leaking out. It was the perfect width for the edge of the boards.
I bought an AOpen MiniPC to run my Growtronix system because it is so small and fits perfectly out of the way inside my cabinet. Sensors that I have connected to my Growtronix network are temp, humidity, door sensor, ph/tds/temp reservoir sensor. I purchased 3 relay control outlets. I used one for my light and fan, another for my ph up and down controller, and another one that I haven't fully decided its best use yet.
I had bought some of those rubber strips for hiding wires and stuff, and I was able to cut off a 2" long piece, cut out the inner rubber lips on it and push it onto the strips I have mounted inside my cab. By doing this I was able to attach my temp and humidity sensors to the 2" piece and make it so I could slide them up and down and still conceal my wires. I did this because I wanted to be able to keep my sensors up high while my plant is in vegetative growth and then to be able to slide them down below the canopy when my plant gets bigger.
I am doing a recirculating DWC. I currently only have 2 buckets inside my cabinet for my first trial grow, but I built this cabinet to be expanded to 3 buckets or 1 bucket and 1 rubbermaid tub for growing other things. I am using the Micro Pore Air Diffusers found at Worms Way. They are perfect.
http://www.wormsway.com/detail.asp?sku=MPAD510
I also built a ph controller with 2 peristaltic pumps for dosing ph up an down when need. As stated above, I used one of my relay outlets for the ph controller. I took out the relay board and hardwired it inside the project box that houses the peristaltic pumps. I also added 2 momentary push buttons to be able to manually turn a pump on if ph is out of whack after a water change and to adjust it more quickly that what the computer is programmed to do. Tygon LFL tubing is used to feed from the peristaltic pumps into my reservoir for mixing.
http://www.iprocessmart.com/images/APT/SP100FOPS-2DDd.pdf
The light that I am using is a 400 watt digital ballast that can use both MH and HPS without having to flick any switches. I bought this off a person on ebay for almost $400 including shipping. This light came with an air cooled hood. I bought a 6" vortex fan to cool my light and for air circulation and venting. I have it venting right out the back so it wouldn't draw as much visible attention.
My reservoir consists of an 18 gallon rubbermaid tub, a float valve for auto top offs, and a 275 gph submersible pump. I did swamp cooling to lower my nutrient solution temps. I had the exhaust for the swamp cooling going into the air intake of my C24 to also help raise humidity levels. I used a 80mm Master Cooler computer fan and a fan filter to lower the amount of dust into my res and to lower light leak into the res. My 6" Vortex fan pulls enough air from the res by itself, but I use the computer fan for at night when my Vortex turns off.
As I was mylaring everything, I came across a great idea. I decided to make some "ground boards" to bring ground reflection closer to the plants and to help prevent my HID from heating up my nutes as much. I spent a lot of time making each board carefully applying the mylar and then cutting my felt strips in half and lining the edge of my ground boards with it hos I wouldn't ding up my mylar as I put them in and take them out. I made it as 2 separate pieces so I could remove them while there are plants in there if I need to work on something or for whatever reason I may have.
I had many troubles figuring out my tubing for feed and drain. I tried a few things that didn't work, and I tried some others. I am currently using 3/4" tubing for feed and 1" for drain/return. Unfortunately with a 275 gph pro pump and only 2 buckets, the pump fills my buckets almost faster than they can drain. This wil create problems once the roots start drifting into my drain lines. I will add a valve into the feedline so I constrict flate rates if needed. I'm also using a GH daul diaphram air pump.
I currently plan to use the Flora Nova series of nutrients, plus flouralicious additives, superthrive, and Hygrozyme. I'm trying to keep this close to organic for the time being. I just dont want to use chemical nutes at this point anymore.
As I mentioned above, I am playing music to my plants. I have a very strong theory and approach I am taking to this due to lots of research that I have done.
This is what my music schedule is for vegitative growth using an 18/6 cycle starting at 6 am and turning off at midnight:
5:30 am - 7:30 am, nature sounds, to help stimualte the plant for the start of the day
7:30 am - 11 am, Bach
11 am - 6 pm, Aphex Twin, I have a strong feeling about this music especially that it hits more frequencies than most other music.
6 pm - 10 pm, Pink Floyd, hey why not.
10 pm - Midnight, Yanni, because its smooth and soothing and my wife wont complain about it considering my cab is in my bedroom
**FUTURE THOUGHTS AND PLANS**
Ok, so I am not nearly done building, but I couldn't wait to post this up any longer. Here's a list of current things brewing in my head, and what I definitely have planned for future improvements.
1. LED's. They are a must. I cannot live without going into that with as much technology as I've already got in this. Plus who can argue with less heat and better use of light spectrum.
2. CO2. Yes this will be computer controlled also. But I will only do this after I do the LED's so I can have a sealed cabinet and not have to vent.
3. Aquaponics. Yep, you heard me. Aquaponics is the way to go.. or at least I think so. But that would be great.
4. Aeroponics. I can't do it with aquaponics, but those are both future options.
5. Fire Control. I plan to purchase a fireboy automatic extinguisher and I good smoke detector that I can integrate with Growtronix. No grow room should do without. http://shopping.rexmar.com/Merchant2/merchant.mvc?Screen=CTGY&Category_Code=fireboyauto
6. Solenoid Valves. I could add a few of these and control it with Growtronix and completely automate my whole grow system including water changes when needed.
7. Motorized light raiser. Geez, this light and fan are damn heavy. Too much of a pain to do by myself as currently setup. (I also just had shoulder surgery)
8. Nutrient doser. I plan to make one soon with some more peristaltic pumps. I want to be able to add superthrive, nutes, and other additives. I still need to think this through more as to my plan of attack on it.
9. Integrate a bio-bucket type system with lava rocks. I wont have an official bio-bucket because I'm using airstones. But the beneficial bacteria is where the growth comes from.
Well, here's the kicker that everyone is going to be depressed about, I'm only growing vegetables. I'm not growing pot because I dont have an interest in taking any chances of going to jail over my hobby of growing. I'm doing another batch of cherry tomatoes. My last one was only one bucket and nearly filled up my cab. But I chose to do vegetables because its legal and because it provides me just as much fun. I love the art of growing and I spent many hours on here and many more on overgrow just researching and learning as much as I can. Unfortunately there aren't any good vegetable hydroponic gardening forums online. They all just suck.
I hope you all are impressed with what I have made. I spent MANY hours building this and trying to perfect it. Here's some more pics for u guys to look at. These are from my last grow with cherry tomatoes.
Ok, So I've been working on building this system for quite some time. I've spent maybe about $3000 in total on this including nutrients and mistakes I've made.
My cabinet features the Growtronix computer controlled grow system. I've got Growtronix controlling everything including light cycles, ph levels, temperature, humidity and music.
To start, before I put the cabinet together I used spray on adhesive to line all my boards with 2 mil mylar. I used 3/8" sanded plywood for the back and mylared that also.
I picked up some 5/8" wide rolls of felt at my local dollar store (BigLots) and I glued and tacked it on at any place that needed it to block the light from leaking out. It was the perfect width for the edge of the boards.
I bought an AOpen MiniPC to run my Growtronix system because it is so small and fits perfectly out of the way inside my cabinet. Sensors that I have connected to my Growtronix network are temp, humidity, door sensor, ph/tds/temp reservoir sensor. I purchased 3 relay control outlets. I used one for my light and fan, another for my ph up and down controller, and another one that I haven't fully decided its best use yet.
I had bought some of those rubber strips for hiding wires and stuff, and I was able to cut off a 2" long piece, cut out the inner rubber lips on it and push it onto the strips I have mounted inside my cab. By doing this I was able to attach my temp and humidity sensors to the 2" piece and make it so I could slide them up and down and still conceal my wires. I did this because I wanted to be able to keep my sensors up high while my plant is in vegetative growth and then to be able to slide them down below the canopy when my plant gets bigger.
I am doing a recirculating DWC. I currently only have 2 buckets inside my cabinet for my first trial grow, but I built this cabinet to be expanded to 3 buckets or 1 bucket and 1 rubbermaid tub for growing other things. I am using the Micro Pore Air Diffusers found at Worms Way. They are perfect.
http://www.wormsway.com/detail.asp?sku=MPAD510
I also built a ph controller with 2 peristaltic pumps for dosing ph up an down when need. As stated above, I used one of my relay outlets for the ph controller. I took out the relay board and hardwired it inside the project box that houses the peristaltic pumps. I also added 2 momentary push buttons to be able to manually turn a pump on if ph is out of whack after a water change and to adjust it more quickly that what the computer is programmed to do. Tygon LFL tubing is used to feed from the peristaltic pumps into my reservoir for mixing.
http://www.iprocessmart.com/images/APT/SP100FOPS-2DDd.pdf
The light that I am using is a 400 watt digital ballast that can use both MH and HPS without having to flick any switches. I bought this off a person on ebay for almost $400 including shipping. This light came with an air cooled hood. I bought a 6" vortex fan to cool my light and for air circulation and venting. I have it venting right out the back so it wouldn't draw as much visible attention.
My reservoir consists of an 18 gallon rubbermaid tub, a float valve for auto top offs, and a 275 gph submersible pump. I did swamp cooling to lower my nutrient solution temps. I had the exhaust for the swamp cooling going into the air intake of my C24 to also help raise humidity levels. I used a 80mm Master Cooler computer fan and a fan filter to lower the amount of dust into my res and to lower light leak into the res. My 6" Vortex fan pulls enough air from the res by itself, but I use the computer fan for at night when my Vortex turns off.
As I was mylaring everything, I came across a great idea. I decided to make some "ground boards" to bring ground reflection closer to the plants and to help prevent my HID from heating up my nutes as much. I spent a lot of time making each board carefully applying the mylar and then cutting my felt strips in half and lining the edge of my ground boards with it hos I wouldn't ding up my mylar as I put them in and take them out. I made it as 2 separate pieces so I could remove them while there are plants in there if I need to work on something or for whatever reason I may have.
I had many troubles figuring out my tubing for feed and drain. I tried a few things that didn't work, and I tried some others. I am currently using 3/4" tubing for feed and 1" for drain/return. Unfortunately with a 275 gph pro pump and only 2 buckets, the pump fills my buckets almost faster than they can drain. This wil create problems once the roots start drifting into my drain lines. I will add a valve into the feedline so I constrict flate rates if needed. I'm also using a GH daul diaphram air pump.
I currently plan to use the Flora Nova series of nutrients, plus flouralicious additives, superthrive, and Hygrozyme. I'm trying to keep this close to organic for the time being. I just dont want to use chemical nutes at this point anymore.
As I mentioned above, I am playing music to my plants. I have a very strong theory and approach I am taking to this due to lots of research that I have done.
This is what my music schedule is for vegitative growth using an 18/6 cycle starting at 6 am and turning off at midnight:
5:30 am - 7:30 am, nature sounds, to help stimualte the plant for the start of the day
7:30 am - 11 am, Bach
11 am - 6 pm, Aphex Twin, I have a strong feeling about this music especially that it hits more frequencies than most other music.
6 pm - 10 pm, Pink Floyd, hey why not.
10 pm - Midnight, Yanni, because its smooth and soothing and my wife wont complain about it considering my cab is in my bedroom
**FUTURE THOUGHTS AND PLANS**
Ok, so I am not nearly done building, but I couldn't wait to post this up any longer. Here's a list of current things brewing in my head, and what I definitely have planned for future improvements.
1. LED's. They are a must. I cannot live without going into that with as much technology as I've already got in this. Plus who can argue with less heat and better use of light spectrum.
2. CO2. Yes this will be computer controlled also. But I will only do this after I do the LED's so I can have a sealed cabinet and not have to vent.
3. Aquaponics. Yep, you heard me. Aquaponics is the way to go.. or at least I think so. But that would be great.
4. Aeroponics. I can't do it with aquaponics, but those are both future options.
5. Fire Control. I plan to purchase a fireboy automatic extinguisher and I good smoke detector that I can integrate with Growtronix. No grow room should do without. http://shopping.rexmar.com/Merchant2/merchant.mvc?Screen=CTGY&Category_Code=fireboyauto
6. Solenoid Valves. I could add a few of these and control it with Growtronix and completely automate my whole grow system including water changes when needed.
7. Motorized light raiser. Geez, this light and fan are damn heavy. Too much of a pain to do by myself as currently setup. (I also just had shoulder surgery)
8. Nutrient doser. I plan to make one soon with some more peristaltic pumps. I want to be able to add superthrive, nutes, and other additives. I still need to think this through more as to my plan of attack on it.
9. Integrate a bio-bucket type system with lava rocks. I wont have an official bio-bucket because I'm using airstones. But the beneficial bacteria is where the growth comes from.
Well, here's the kicker that everyone is going to be depressed about, I'm only growing vegetables. I'm not growing pot because I dont have an interest in taking any chances of going to jail over my hobby of growing. I'm doing another batch of cherry tomatoes. My last one was only one bucket and nearly filled up my cab. But I chose to do vegetables because its legal and because it provides me just as much fun. I love the art of growing and I spent many hours on here and many more on overgrow just researching and learning as much as I can. Unfortunately there aren't any good vegetable hydroponic gardening forums online. They all just suck.
I hope you all are impressed with what I have made. I spent MANY hours building this and trying to perfect it. Here's some more pics for u guys to look at. These are from my last grow with cherry tomatoes.
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i like the use of the computer, have you had any problems with the ph dosing? i was lookin into that but unsure of the results. my ph is constantly needin down adjustment. 
anyway im glad to see some veggies and even more to see tomatoes. i would kill two of my kushes to grow tomatoes in their place, if i knew how. 
