My diy automated system is getting closer.

PlumberSoCal2 · Mar 12, 2026

chuey316 said:
Nice sounding setup. One of my next additions will be ai cameras to monitor for issues and give instructions.

Hum. Total overkill maybe? I want hands on, every day. BUT, I'm in greenhouses and I somehow won the POTM contest and will be receiving a Pulse One. The only things I have on auto are lights, standard indoor home lighting LED's with some defusers removed. But since Pulse One was gracious enough to support THC Farmer I'm going to incorporate their device AND I'm gonna blog about it, good, bad, and indifferent because it’s the least we can do for those who support our hobby and favorite site

Hands on makes life worth living

PlumberSoCal2 · Mar 12, 2026

shooter64738 said:
Like most things this started as one thing and over the years has exploded into something else. I have spinal cord damage at c6-c7 so everything mid chest is kinda wonky and walking is very exhausting/impossible.

Mine is not so much diy anymore, but if you're crafty and have a 3d printer I guess you could. :)

Most of the hardware control is done with C++, running (mostly now) on some flavor of stm32, all connected via can bus. The hmi/front end and ml runs on a small windows touch screen pc. I did have to do some odd stuff with a pi compute board for the cameras.

My wife helps me quite a bit and any tasks I delegated to her I found a path to automate it. Then several years later I've created a whole eco system.

L4-L5 herniated disc. Constant pain. This plant, both THC heavy and hemp CBD heavy has improved my life, both physically and mentally as well as my wife's life. This is medicine

chuey316 · Mar 12, 2026

PlumberSoCal2 said:
Hum. Total overkill maybe? I want hands on, every day. BUT, I'm in greenhouses and I somehow won the POTM contest and will be receiving a Pulse One. The only things I have on auto are lights, standard indoor home lighting LED's with some defusers removed. But since Pulse One was gracious enough to support THC Farmer I'm going to incorporate their device AND I'm gonna blog about it, good, bad, and indifferent because it’s the least we can do for those who support our hobby and favorite site

Hands on makes life worth living

Overkill for sure. This whole system is overkill but in the best way. I love being hands on myself, but getting to the grow room up and down stairs multiple times a day is getting too rough, and free time is more and more sparse these days. Anything I can do to limit my time in there to basic things like top dressing and trimming while the automation handles the rest is good by me.

As for the AI, I don't fully trust it, as it could never replace the human factor, but if it can alert to even potential issues it will be worth it. Plus some 2k images of said issues that can be shared for confirmation will be nice.

I designed this so even a person who can't tell you what cannabis even looks like could grow some and have at least a half decent harvest. It will never replace the hands on experience that creates the best grows, but it can help to learn the process. Some of these features could be the difference between harvest and no harvest to a novice who is learning.

chuey316 · Mar 12, 2026

PlumberSoCal2 said:
L4-L5 herniated disc. Constant pain. This plant, both THC heavy and hemp CBD heavy has improved my life, both physically and mentally as well as my wife's life. This is medicine

Disc bulge at L3 and L5 here along with facet hypertrophy and facet stenosis at L1, L2, L3, L4, and L5-S1.

CannabalBotanical · Mar 13, 2026

chuey316 said:
I may sell them, or just go open source. I haven't decided yet, but I'll need a grow or two on it either way to make sure everything is good. As for the ranges, they are all adjustable from the dash

There's an option for LED as well. By clicking the drop-downs, you can choose between veg, flower, and drying stages, as well as MH, HPS, and LED lighting source.

Yes. The wattage, distance, PPFD, and DLI are all user defined and editable through the dash. Right now the system uses the ppfd range set by the user, and uses the light type, wattage, bulb hours, and light distance to calculate PPFD/DLI, and show the calculation on the dash. I'm currently coding in the advice to raise or lower lights based on the PPFD/DLI, as well as a switch to toggle between a calculation, and an actual PAR sensor for the most accurate data.

Yes. This is already coded in.

Yes. There is a selection for number of veg, flower, and drying weeks in the dash. I am currently coding the addition of a manual advancement or regression of the current week as well, so if plants are growing faster or slower than expected, or recovering from training, the week can be changed to give more or less time.

Yes, it will.

Yes, all devices have a on/off toggle to include or exclude them from automation. If I decide to sell or distribute the code I will likely add an AC support, but I don't currently have the use for it personally, so it is missing at the moment.

Not taken that way at all. In fact I love these types of questions because it makes me go back and check the code for any good additions if needed.

Would be cool to include a mode for outdoor using just sunlight or a hybrid mode for indoor during propagation and early veg then outdoor the rest of the season

amneziaHaze · Mar 13, 2026

what does it do with the ppfd? how does it know when a plant has grown in to the light? and if the plant is now growing in to the light and making a firehazard does it say anything? or is this all just a display? my acinfity does that allready plus more

chuey316 · Mar 13, 2026

amneziaHaze said:
what does it do with the ppfd? how does it know when a plant has grown in to the light? and if the plant is now growing in to the light and making a firehazard does it say anything? or is this all just a display? my acinfity does that allready plus more

It's setup to either give a calculation based on the light type, wattage, light distance and bulb life, or to use a par meter and AI camera for real-time monitoring. It can control a light mover as well and raise/lower the light based on the PPFD/plant distance. I'm not using a light mover myself, but they can be built for pretty cheap, and eventually I probably will.

As with anything there are some trade-offs and some advantages. I compared the system to the AC Infinity CTR89Q and there are some things that the CTR89Q can do that mine doesn't, though with a few changes to the code it could do half of them, and the other half is either covered in a different way, or just not needed, at least in my case, and there is a list of things that this does that the CTR89Q can't.

Something like the AC Infinity is nice for a straight forward quick setup, and I wouldn't mind having one at all, but I like to tinker and build stuff, and this cost me 1/3 of the price, and there are still countless different things that I could change or add to it in the future for little to no money if wanted/needed.

shooter64738 · Mar 13, 2026

I think most of us look at something through our own lenses. Some see no point in automation, some like the automation for reducing their work, and some must have it to grow at all.

Something that every system in the market lacks is full integration. Ive got vivosun, spider farmer, mars hydro, ac infinity, vevor, pretty much all of them. They work as advertised, but they only cover some aspects. They are closed systems and you cannot integrate them together.

So if we take ac infinity for example, and I want to grow 18 plants. Some are seedlings, some are in early veg, some in late flower. They all require different things that no single system can cover. Ac infinity has some neat things, but there's not a full integration. If one plants needs more or less water than another, or different nutrients, or different light settings, you can't tune that. You can't tune in detail like this plant is in a 5g grow bag with coco, or these plants are all in 3g tubs of soil.

When you build your own, you can do all of these things. Not everyone needs, or wants to do those things, but thats generally why diy comes up. Nothing on the market fits what they need. And it costs money to develop these things and these companies dont want to invest into that.

That's my primary motivation for doing it. Plus doing all that research and design is where I get my therapy. I dont smoke or use cannabis, but designing grow hardware for it is where I get my enjoyment.

cannafarmer420 · Mar 13, 2026

PlumberSoCal2 said:
L4-L5 herniated disc. Constant pain. This plant, both THC heavy and hemp CBD heavy has improved my life, both physically and mentally as well as my wife's life. This is medicine

I have crohns so I get it, weed is a godsend

shooter64738 · Mar 13, 2026

PlumberSoCal2 said:
L4-L5 herniated disc. Constant pain. This plant, both THC heavy and hemp CBD heavy has improved my life, both physically and mentally as well as my wife's life. This is medicine

I could write a book about how I got to where I am with cannabis, but the shortest version...

Without thc my wife would probably have done a ctrl+alt+delete on herself. And had she not needed it, which motivated me to grow it, I would have definitely done a ctrl+alt+delete. The thc was medication for her when modern medicine decided that nerve pain is 'just a feeling'. Her need for it when she was bed ridden, gave me a purpose that died when we lost or son.

Im stuck in a chair most of the time, but she's vibrant and active now. I still have a purpose. Ppl can say whatever they want about it, but I've met so many people who were saved by weed... its medicine, no matter how you look at it.

Sorry to hijack the thread. Im done now :)

chuey316 · Mar 14, 2026

I am adding code for SIP style containers since that's what I plan to go back to. Each bucket will have a 1.25" pvc fill tube painted black with a 1.18" white closed cell foam backer rod inserted.

Insert the rod with the reservoir empty and cut it flush with the pvc.
Fill the reservoir and the rod will rise.
Place a ring of high contrast tape around the rod at the mid point between the top of the rod and the top of the pvc.

When the tape enters the pvc, the reservoir is half empty. The integrated AI will monitor each bucket when it does it's other checks, and will alert when the tape disappears. This will give ample time to fill the reservoir before the soil ever has a chance to lose moisture.

This will be great for someone like me who has terrible memory, and forgets to check on things when life comes up. I may add RDWC monitoring in the future as well in case I decide to break it out again, but the code for that would be minimal. Mainly just adding separate temp, ph, and tds sensors for the reservoir.

chuey316 · Apr 21, 2026

Pulled the trigger on an HLG 600 R-Spec today. Couldn't pass it up. It's only been used for one season, and the price was more than right at $100. Now I just need to add in the code to adjust LED intensity so I can static mount the light and still have the PPFD be automated. Shouldn't be too much work since most of the code is already in place.

Going to build a new 5x5 room as well and use my current 3x4 tent for rooting and vegging clones when I decide to start growing SOG under the LED.

My diy automated system is getting closer.

My diy automated system is getting closer.

PlumberSoCal2

PlumberSoCal2

chuey316

chuey316

CannabalBotanical

amneziaHaze

chuey316

shooter64738

cannafarmer420

🐼 🚀 living soil

shooter64738

chuey316

chuey316

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