OUTDOOR MAYHEM

[refriedbeano]

This is my third season growing outdoors. I've been building out on public land next to a dam, since last year I've been harassed by the water authority, the head of security of this organization has found all my "sites" so I'm going to have to build a new one when the seedlings mature up.
I've been designing and testing some new machines to automatically dry and cure marijuana, called the budcure box and cannaster. They are needing some attention but I still have allot of time to work on them.
Right now I just got the seeds in and I'm almost ready to get into gardening mode. I have to glue down the cloche greenhouse that i have to some foam board because last year ants ate my seedlings. I haven't seen any around but you never know. The type of marijuana is called grandaddy purple Autoflower seeds, from ILGM, but I've noticed that the phenotype is all over the place with this company, so it might not even matter what they are. But I got 20 of them, and plane to start small and plant only two of them, then keep on planting as i move them out of the cloche.
For the BudCure Box I have to CNC a new PCB because I have had nothing but problems trying to get the relay or mosfet switches to actually work. It takes so much to CNC the board, put all the components on it, make sure it all works only to find it didn't. But other than that i just have to install a fan and its ready to dry.
For the Cannaster (the machine inside the BudCure Box) the lid isn't designed right and it doesn't let the pressure get down enough to dry the plant material. I have to redesign the lid and gasket to try and improve on that, because in the enclosed space the buds will grow mold in only half a day. But the whole purpose of the Cannaster is to get the bud to the perfect 63% rh so you can throw it in a mason jar and store it away, without burping it.

 

[Creeperpark]

This is my third season growing outdoors. I've been building out on public land next to a dam, since last year I've been harassed by the water authority, the head of security of this organization has found all my "sites" so I'm going to have to build a new one when the seedlings mature up.
I've been designing and testing some new machines to automatically dry and cure marijuana, called the budcure box and cannaster. They are needing some attention but I still have allot of time to work on them.
Right now I just got the seeds in and I'm almost ready to get into gardening mode. I have to glue down the cloche greenhouse that i have to some foam board because last year ants ate my seedlings. I haven't seen any around but you never know. The type of marijuana is called grandaddy purple Autoflower seeds, from ILGM, but I've noticed that the phenotype is all over the place with this company, so it might not even matter what they are. But I got 20 of them, and plane to start small and plant only two of them, then keep on planting as i move them out of the cloche.
For the BudCure Box I have to CNC a new PCB because I have had nothing but problems trying to get the relay or mosfet switches to actually work. It takes so much to CNC the board, put all the components on it, make sure it all works only to find it didn't. But other than that i just have to install a fan and its ready to dry.
For the Cannaster (the machine inside the BudCure Box) the lid isn't designed right and it doesn't let the pressure get down enough to dry the plant material. I have to redesign the lid and gasket to try and improve on that, because in the enclosed space the buds will grow mold in only half a day. But the whole purpose of the Cannaster is to get the bud to the perfect 63% rh so you can throw it in a mason jar and store it away, without burping it.

Thanks for the post friend. Very interesting so keep us posted on your work.

 

[refriedbeano]

Hey icmag! Today I completed the platform and I'm pretty happy it only took a few hours. I drove 1" rebar into the ground to hold it on the cliffside. Then it was just two 16' 2x4's to fill it out. The platform is pretty solid and all that is left is to bend some rebar to hang up bug netting. Then I have to get a few 55 gallon barrels back there.
Plan is to get regular femenized seeds for a big harvest at the end of the year. Planning on 15 gallon pots. Still going to do the autoflowers to test out the machines.

 

[refriedbeano]

ok guys, kicking it into high gear here soon. The mission was to get a 55 gallon car wash drum back to the site with my boat. It was a white knuckle ride back with it. Imagine yourself going up against the wind with a 7.5 amp hour battery that's almost certainly going to die at any minute. And once it goes your either gonna have to paddle like hell against the wind and waves, or just turn around and say its gonna take all day. And i was already on empty as far as physical stamina. Luckily it powered through and I got to my dock. (yes i built a dock that no one messes with)
So I got the drum back to the site and filled it up using my harbor freight gas water pump. The thing is a beast, pushing it up 50 feet and through about 400 feet of hose.
I have 3 flowering autos moved into 3 gallon pots, 2 more autos about two weeks old, and I just planted about 10 seeds I got from bean patch seeds. They sent me 20 of them for 40 bucks... so i gotta get some more seedling pots.
I also managed to deploy my automatic mister for my tobacco seeds. They are so small that the soil has to stay moist most of the time, requiring about 3 mists a day.
The next mission is to haul the rest of the supplies to the site (mostly the soil, but I'm going to wait till the last minute since I am so exhausted all the time) and setup the bug screen. I'm thinking I will design some 3d prints to attach 16' lengths of rebar to the platform and drape the netting across that. I might also just use some wood and drill some holes to slide the rebar through. If I haven't said it yet, I have a construction site I'm pillaging (they stole from me way more than I'm going to steal from them btw).

 

[refriedbeano]

"King Kong ain't got shit on me!" - Denzel Washington

Starting work on the BudCure after last seasons debauchery. The BudCure is broken down into two machines, the BudCure Box and the Cannaster. The status of the project is that I've tentatively tested it on tobacco, but freezing weather destroyed the harvest. My objectives for the BudCure Box is to get a new PCB made, make my own wiring harnesses, and get it up and running again.
The Cannaster was also only a half success last season. I got the machine to mostly work only it couldn't get the vacuum down below 9 psi. I found out that its absolutely essential to get the psi down to below 5 or the product will mold. Luckily I've been calibrating my 3D printers so I should be able to make some adjustments and get it working in short order.
Once these machines are working again I will have the joyous task of developing a better program to dry my buds.

 

[refriedbeano]

Allright, I was thinking getting the budcure box up and running was gonna be a few days kind of thing, but it turned into a few weeks! First thing I couldn't explain was why I couldn't get the transistor I was using to switch the fan off and on to turn off all the way. I did a test with a breadboard and it worked pretty good, then when I put everything together with my pcb it didn't work at all. So I had to switch to a mosfet. Then I had an ordeal where I wanted to switch sensors to save on memory, so i could use a screen buffer on the OLED. This takes up about half of the memory, but lets me refresh the sensor readings individually instead of having to reset the entire screen (which doesn't look nice and my work around doesn't really work). Well I almost succeeded, I had about 200 bytes to play with, but it only worked for about a second. There goes an evening of work.... Next thing I know, nothing is working when i go to test it out. First my mosfets fail, but it only took me a half day to realize I wasn't using a flyback diode. Have to go make another pcb... and its just been like driving down a road with speedbumps every time i hit the gas. But finally I am done.
The video shows my setup, the sensor screen shows the temperature of the TEC, then the temperature of the box and the humidity level. At the bottom is the weight. To turn on the TEC you go the TEC on/off screen and click in, which brings you to the next menu where you choose whether you want to turn on the fan, the TEC, or use both. I still have to put some programs in. I have already sorted out how to get the TEC at the dew point so condensation forms. I'm thinking I will use the fan for the first few days of drying, then switch over to the tec for the final week. I'm thinking the target will be two weeks total dry time. And I'm going to have to think about how to use the weight data, whether I'm going to keep it in memory...

So I'm about a week away from my first live test, I'm just going to harvest one plant (out of three that are ready). I still have to get the cannaster up and running... all the electronics are working but I have to 3D print a new lid and pour a new silicon gasket, and get it pulling a good vacuum (down to 5 psi).

 

[refriedbeano]

First test is underway. I just harvested and trimmed the bud and then hung it up on the load cell, its reading 24 grams right now, though its fluctuating a bit. This harvest is way too small to do any active drying (the fan and the TEC), and the humidity level isn't even rising above 70. But the real point is to test the user friendliness of the budcure box. The screen setup is a major stumbling block, I have to switch the microcontroller for a less popular type called the atmega4809-pf, which is still in a DIP package (not surface mount) so I can still make the pcb in house... and it still costs only 4$. Probably with that controller I could put in a touchscreen, not sure if i'll have time to figure that out though.
And my regular seeds that i planted a few weeks ago are looking amazing. I really enjoy these much more than the autoflower genetics. I have to get some soil up to my spot this weekend to plant them into 7 gallon pots.
I'm going to try and get as much time as I can with the dry cycle in the budcure box, I'm thinking atleast a week. The first two days the plant can fend off mold, but after that it'll get ugly quick. Once its to about 10 grams it'll be time for the cannaster, which I'm putting together right now.

 

[refriedbeano]

I'm having some problems with the weights. I have a 1kg load cell, 2.2 pounds, which should have a resolution down to .1 grams. Now measuring that low is kinda difficult because I have all of the electronics right above the load cell platform where I hang the buds, so any wire touching it at all will add weight to it. And the harder thing is that the reading will drift ( and I am trying to read moisture loss over the time of a day or so ). But what I forgot to do was record the initial weight with my real scale, so I have no idea what the target weight was supposed to be. I went ahead and smoked a little bit of the sample and now I'm on to testing it out on the cannaster.
So I was successful in getting it into working order again I just had to make a few design changes for the part that connects the vacuum line and data wires. It now holds on to the vacuum as well as i need it to.... the program I'm running right now is an automatic drying program which turns on the pump every half hour for five minutes, held between 7 and 8psi. Atmospheric pressure is 14.7. This is a quick drying routine, they will be dehydrated by the morning.
What I still have to do is find some salts to do a calibration of the humidity sensor. I'm using one of those weather station sensors which can read temp, humidity, and pressure in one small chip, the bme280. Since the purpose of this machine is to reach the perfect moisture content (over the shortest time possible to limit the risk of mildew) I need a pretty accurate 65% reading. Then I can use the humidity sensor reading to stop the pump.

 

[refriedbeano]

Started a GITHUB account for the BudCure machines

 

[refriedbeano]

So I've decided the arduino nano has got to go! I need real-time updates for my variables. And I also decided I wanted confirmed numbers from my hydrometer. So I decided to make the effort to switch to the D1-mini, which is totally different from the arduino boards. It can communicate using bluetooth or wifi and has so much more memory, and its still smaller than the arduino nano. The only problem is that its got allot less pins, but I sat down and looked really good at what I could do for it and realized that it would actually work to make everything better. So I'm switching to the D1-mini before I harvest my plant next week.
And for the hydrometer, I decided on going for a two point calibration, one with rock salt and another with magnesium chloride. I'm using a precision humidity sensor from sparkfun called the shtc3. With rock salt, it read dead on 75% after 7 hours. I'm running the magnesium salt test right now, it is at 40% after 40 minutes, so I expect it'll be dead on also.

Here I'm running the D1-mini i2c line off of the rx/tx pins. The only problem is that I can't use the serial monitor for debugging purposes. I still have to test the other components of the BudCure Box, I should have just one pin left over.

 

[refriedbeano]

Ok guys, we are in position to bring in the harvest later this year. I have 10 really good looking transplants thats been in the ground for about a week now. The weather has been beautiful and these guys look like they're going to pack a punch! So much better than autos....

The soil i'm using is setup so i don't theoretically have to fertilize them. I put a couple of inches of super soil in the bottom of each pot (coir, perlite, worm castings, azomite, kelp, and Dr.Earth tomato fertilizer all allowed to hot compost a few months) and then I used some soil from what was supposed to be my garden bed. I made that soil late last year using the top soil and leaf mold I found around an oak tree. It has a really nice texture!

For the BudCure, I have made some upgrades that make it into an actually useful machine. First I remade the electronics using the D1 mini, and it is working smoothly. The display doesn't flicker and the variables are being updated in real time.

So now I have to focus in on the foremost problem, the fact that the load cell doesn't work that well. One part of the problem was with how I attached the removable tray to the load cell, so i redesigned that part using 30 little neodymium magnets. Now the tray is held more firmly and provides decent repeatability.

The next problem with the load cell is that the measurement will drift over time. The process is that you tare the scale before you hang the bud up, then you let the buds hang for a while and remove them, then the scale will go down to zero + an offset that the scale drifted. I have a few theories, one is that static electricity is building up and providing the offset, so i could setup a circuit that would ground the load cell. Another theory is that I'm polling the load cell too often in my code, so i'm going to redo that section.
Hopefully I can overcome this challenge because I want the main function of drying to be based on the weight. So you can just dial in the target weight you want the budcure to dry to.

The bud in the picture weighed 40 grams when i harvested it 3 days ago. It now weighs in at 17 grams, at 10 grams I'm going to put them into the Cannaster. Work on the cannaster is pretty much done. I have just finished getting in calibration data for the bme humidity sensor, using MgCl and NaCl. I have to get Chatgpt to make a math equation for a 2 point calibration.

 

[refriedbeano]

Ok guys, we are in position to bring in the harvest later this year. I have 10 really good looking transplants thats been in the ground for about a week now. The weather has been beautiful and these guys look like they're going to pack a punch! So much better than autos....

The soil i'm using is setup so i don't theoretically have to fertilize them. I put a couple of inches of super soil in the bottom of each pot (coir, perlite, worm castings, azomite, kelp, and Dr.Earth tomato fertilizer all allowed to hot compost a few months) and then I used some soil from what was supposed to be my garden bed. I made that soil late last year using the top soil and leaf mold I found around an oak tree. It has a really nice texture!

For the BudCure, I have made some upgrades that make it into an actually useful machine. First I remade the electronics using the D1 mini, and it is working smoothly. The display doesn't flicker and the variables are being updated in real time.

So now I have to focus in on the foremost problem, the fact that the load cell doesn't work that well. One part of the problem was with how I attached the removable tray to the load cell, so i redesigned that part using 30 little neodymium magnets. Now the tray is held more firmly and provides decent repeatability.

The next problem with the load cell is that the measurement will drift over time. The process is that you tare the scale before you hang the bud up, then you let the buds hang for a while and remove them, then the scale will go down to zero + an offset that the scale drifted. I have a few theories, one is that static electricity is building up and providing the offset, so i could setup a circuit that would ground the load cell. Another theory is that I'm polling the load cell too often in my code, so i'm going to redo that section.
Hopefully I can overcome this challenge because I want the main function of drying to be based on the weight. So you can just dial in the target weight you want the budcure to dry to.

The bud in the picture weighed 40 grams when i harvested it 3 days ago. It now weighs in at 17 grams, at 10 grams I'm going to put them into the Cannaster. Work on the cannaster is pretty much done. I have just finished getting in calibration data for the bme humidity sensor, using MgCl and NaCl. I have to get Chatgpt to make a math equation for a 2 point calibration.

 

[refriedbeano]

Website for the BudCure Box and cannaster is up!

BudCure

I'm starting to close into the core functionalilty of the machines. For the BudCure Box, I have to find a work around the fact that cheap load cells from china will have significant drift in the measurements, so I'm either gonna have to get clever or shell out 60$ for a good load cell.
And the Cannaster needs a better humidity sensor, as the one on the bme280 isn't even close at the 60-90% range, and doesn't have good repeatability. I found someone on amazon selling a bme280 with a precision humidity sensor on it too! that was a surprise! I've also come across the problem that the outside humidity will interfere with the humidity readings in the vacuum chamber, so i can't tell by how much the humidity is increasing from the buds. I plan on making an inline air dryer with silica beads in the next few weeks, where i can pull a vacuum and then release it through the air dryer, and be able to see by how much the buds are increasing the humidity.

 

[refriedbeano]

The plants are getting way bigger, and I haven't even used any nutrients yet.

One issue that came up is security. I'm right in with the rich people and the across the river is a kind of tourist attraction. We get allot of air traffic.... when i heard a helicopter buzzing around looking at stuff I realized what a problem this is. And I chopped down a tree I could've left hanging over my spot.


And so, I have accomplished the task of porting over the budcure to the esp processor. I feel like its now its much more user friendly thanks to the more modern resources available. A big one was having interrupts on every pin, so that when you turn the knob or press the button it can detect it without loosing any user inputs. It also made the menu system much easier to implement.

So what I really want is a precision machine where none of the components cost more than 10$. I learned the load cells that measure weight are going to have drift in the measurement over time... so I devised a scheme to overcome that where you have to remove the tray and tare the scale back to zero. I think that it should work and be able to give me milligram resolution so I can just sit back and watch the evaporation proceed.

The weight there is only the weight of the buds. Every time you want to see how much weight is lost, you go to "new weight" selection and tare out the weight, which is also saved into an array of weights that have been taken. I'm going to make a youtube video about its operation here once I verify that my setup is going to work. Theres's no reason it wouldn't, but i have been surprised before.


And, I luckily found these flowers outside a flower shop yesterday

Because I've been wanting to test out the event where I have to use the TEC or fan to keep the humidity down. So I'm going to fill up the budcure box with these boys next week.


And finally, a rant on trying to update the cannaster to use the esp processor.

It was a waste of two days of effort. Well, I actually did all the work in one day, which consisted of putting together a pcb on my computer, then machining it on my 3018 cnc, then populating it with my soldering iron.

The aggravating part is testing it out and correcting all the mistakes you invariably made. But then I never breadboard tested if the esp, which runs at 3.4v, could drive the motor controller which works at 5v, without an extra IC chip. Well, I learned it kinda can but it is far too weak to lift the lid. And then while doing the software I realized I hated this design and I'd much rather use the arduino boards for motor related tasks. So now I have the dreaded PTSD demon attacking me (from a boat motor design I spent weeks on that ended up not being feasible).


So now that I have the budcure box giving me precise readings about the moisture content of the buds, I wanted to see if I can surmount the last real problem with the cannaster and that is the outside humidity levels being higher than 65% (the target humidity), I'm trying to solve it with an inline air dryer held on to the side of the cannaster

First test all i did was hook it up and pump down the chamber as low as I could (5psi) then I opened up the inline dryer. I'm using silica gel as the desiccant. Nothing really happened to the humidity inside the chamber. But I have an idea that I could use a servo motor to slowly pull air through the tube that I will be testing out this weekend. This is all just to get an accurate moisture reading and make this a precision machine... but its not a deal breaker as this is super useful for drying out bud by feel too.

 

[Creeperpark]

The plants are getting way bigger, and I haven't even used any nutrients yet.

One issue that came up is security. I'm right in with the rich people and the across the river is a kind of tourist attraction. We get allot of air traffic.... when i heard a helicopter buzzing around looking at stuff I realized what a problem this is. And I chopped down a tree I could've left hanging over my spot.


And so, I have accomplished the task of porting over the budcure to the esp processor. I feel like its now its much more user friendly thanks to the more modern resources available. A big one was having interrupts on every pin, so that when you turn the knob or press the button it can detect it without loosing any user inputs. It also made the menu system much easier to implement.

So what I really want is a precision machine where none of the components cost more than 10$. I learned the load cells that measure weight are going to have drift in the measurement over time... so I devised a scheme to overcome that where you have to remove the tray and tare the scale back to zero. I think that it should work and be able to give me milligram resolution so I can just sit back and watch the evaporation proceed.

The weight there is only the weight of the buds. Every time you want to see how much weight is lost, you go to "new weight" selection and tare out the weight, which is also saved into an array of weights that have been taken. I'm going to make a youtube video about its operation here once I verify that my setup is going to work. Theres's no reason it wouldn't, but i have been surprised before.


And, I luckily found these flowers outside a flower shop yesterday

Because I've been wanting to test out the event where I have to use the TEC or fan to keep the humidity down. So I'm going to fill up the budcure box with these boys next week.


And finally, a rant on trying to update the cannaster to use the esp processor.

It was a waste of two days of effort. Well, I actually did all the work in one day, which consisted of putting together a pcb on my computer, then machining it on my 3018 cnc, then populating it with my soldering iron.

The aggravating part is testing it out and correcting all the mistakes you invariably made. But then I never breadboard tested if the esp, which runs at 3.4v, could drive the motor controller which works at 5v, without an extra IC chip. Well, I learned it kinda can but it is far too weak to lift the lid. And then while doing the software I realized I hated this design and I'd much rather use the arduino boards for motor related tasks. So now I have the dreaded PTSD demon attacking me (from a boat motor design I spent weeks on that ended up not being feasible).


So now that I have the budcure box giving me precise readings about the moisture content of the buds, I wanted to see if I can surmount the last real problem with the cannaster and that is the outside humidity levels being higher than 65% (the target humidity), I'm trying to solve it with an inline air dryer held on to the side of the cannaster

First test all i did was hook it up and pump down the chamber as low as I could (5psi) then I opened up the inline dryer. I'm using silica gel as the desiccant. Nothing really happened to the humidity inside the chamber. But I have an idea that I could use a servo motor to slowly pull air through the tube that I will be testing out this weekend. This is all just to get an accurate moisture reading and make this a precision machine... but its not a deal breaker as this is super useful for drying out bud by feel too.

Very interesting friend.

 

[refriedbeano]

SO... I feel like I have accomplished my goals for right now and I'm just enjoying putting in the small details. I'm testing out the BudCure Box with a larger load of roses to dry. The humidity level rised up to the 80's yesterday when I hung them up, and the weight was at 170 grams. Today I coded something for the fan to turn on if the humidity level gets above 77%, and turn off when it drops down to 75%. Its working quite well. I've also updated the home screen to show which program is running in the lower left side. What I'm having to do to get accurate weight readings is to only read the weight into memory at night (due to thermal drift of the load cell). My goal is to extend the drying time by atleast a week, preferably two weeks.
And you know what, I think this is a better method of drying buds than most other methods, because for one the buds are hanging upside down and two, you can customize the weight of your buds for sale. I'm not sure if I will be selling machines or marijuana in the future, since you can't buy a good drying machine nor buy cured buds! Maybe both!

 

[refriedbeano]

Allright its been a while but I'm still at it! I started realizing I wasn't gonna make it very long if i didn't do something about the smell, as the trail is just 30 feet away. I made a containment thing with tarp and green netting, I can also protect it from rain by just folding over the tarp. I'm pretty lucky it works cause you can only get a whiff of something dank here and there, but its also pretty hot and once it cools down you shouldn't be able to smell anything. Also, as a bonus it seems like the plants are using less water since the humidity is higher now.

I picked up a few more projects, one is I'm going to be building an induction heater for dabbing. What is better about it is that I'll be using 18650's as the power source so it is portable. Also, I'm going to be making a bottle jack rosin press before I begin harvesting.
I gotta get the cannaster ready to go again. Somehow the lid isn't sealing right anymore, maybe the heat has warped it... and the electronics are acting up. So I'm about to make some more pourable silicon gaskets and putting in a new pcb next week.
Oh and I had a run in with the authority guy again yesterday. He asked if I am still living up on the ridge ( he has a thing for tearing apart my tents ). I was on my way out and he pulls out his phone and starts recording me, asking if i was going to assault him. I'm not quite sure why he pulled such a bitch move as to hide behind his phone.
Anyways, he assured me he will be back with his friends to take all of my stuff out. I don't really believe it'll ever happen though. But this guy has a knack for showing up at the perfect time, and I'm always nervous when I'm coming out of my grow spot!