Friday, September 30, 2011

Here is my Arduino-based Grow Room Controller.

This nifty project of mine effectively controls a small scale grow room setup. My setup currently controls only a few appliances, but the code could easily be modified to work with other environmental variables. My setup contains:
  • The Grow Light
  • The Exhaust Fan that pulls air out of the room, through the grow light fixture
  • A Heater
The controller has the ability to log the temperature and humidity readings with a time stamp to an SD card. It also logs events such as the powering on and off of appliances in a separate file in the same directory. The file directory structure is as follows: "YEAR\MM\DD\" and there is an event and data log for each day.

It is composed of the following components:
The pin map can easily be deciphered from the beginning of the code and by looking up the communication protocols used by different components

You can dig into the code for more info (be warned it's almost 900 lines of code including comments). DOWNLOAD: GrowRoomController_v1.zip
**The download includes necessary libraries that normally do not come with the Arduino IDE, it also includes a modified version of the SLCD library that uses the NewSoftSerial library to communicate with the LCD display.

20 comments:

  1. is there more info on building one; i am not very knowledgable when it comes to arduino.

    hPloszay93@gmail.com

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  2. Nice project. Ofcourse one cannot help but wonder what you are growing :-)

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  3. keep up the good work brother, i've just ordered an arduino and would like to look to use it in a similar set up. Ideally i would like to strip it down to an ardiuno uno and just the sd card if its possible.
    Will keep following your progress with intrest.

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  4. Wow sick.. A friend of mine is building a controller but using heavy duty relays and a micro atx board.. I think the next one we build will be using arduino.

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  5. I can see this project expanding to a hydro/aero-ponics system. This would require the use of more pumps and water level sensors. Generally what is always useful is a thermal cut-off mains relay in case something goes wrong and the temperature spikes. If you really get into it, there is also ozone generators for the exhaust air, CO2 supplementing and water pH, NH+/-,and P monitoring. You could grow some pretty big, erm, basil plants or strawberries if you wanted.
    ;-)

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  6. tried to verify and build your code on arduino IDE 1.0 today. recieved the following two errors:

    C:\Users\Dick Sprinkles\Desktop\arduino-1.0\libraries\NewSoftSerial/NewSoftSerial.h:71: error: conflicting return type specified for 'virtual void NewSoftSerial::write(uint8_t)'

    C:\Users\Dick Sprinkles\Desktop\arduino-1.0\hardware\arduino\cores\arduino/Print.h:48: error: overriding 'virtual size_t Print::write(uint8_t)'

    Any suggestions? Ive read through the code but don't seem to know where it goes wrong

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    Replies
    1. im having the same problem. did you ever find a fix?

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  7. Just a FYI to everyone, the project is suspended while I'm attending college. I'll either start from scratch or continue where I left off once I get some computer science and calculus classes under my belt.

    If your having issues compiling make sure you're using the libraries I provided because they are slightly modified to be compatible with this project. Also I designed this on Arduino 0023 so there will probably be several errors if you try compiling with Arduino 1.0.

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  8. Interesting project..can i have more detail about how to set up with
    exhaust fan and heater?..thanks ...

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    Replies
    1. Sorry for the slow reply, I used some PowerSwitch Tails from Sparkfun. Here's a link: https://www.sparkfun.com/products/9842

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  9. This is an excellent project.Please upload your code files again, have they been removed from the server?

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    Replies
    1. Thank you for letting me know, I uploaded the code to github and there's a link in my latest post.

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    2. http://decoy81.blogspot.com.ar/

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  10. Hi,
    I have free Arduino code to create a sunrise and sunset for indoor plants. So not to go from darkness to 100% light brightness immediately, shocking the plants.
    You can get it for free at thevapecode.com enjoy!
    thanks,

    ReplyDelete
  11. Hi,
    I have free Arduino code to create a sunrise and sunset for indoor plants. So not to go from darkness to 100% light brightness immediately, shocking the plants.
    You can get it for free at thevapecode.com enjoy!
    thanks,

    ReplyDelete
  12. iT IS NICE TO ROBOTIZE EVERYHING, BUT WHEN YOU GROW WHATEVER
    CROP IT WILL THRIVE BY HUMAN TLC* THIS SYSTEMS CANNOT MAKE
    CHECKS ABOUT FERTILIZER-MISTAKES OR TRIPS/LICE/BAD EELS ETC.
    iTS FOR PEOPLE WHO LEAVE THEIR CROP FOR EIGHT WEEKS OR SO.
    wHAT FARMER LEAVES HIS CROP THAT LONG?? .......RIGHT !!

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  13. http://www.fileden.com/files/2008/11/20/2193594/GrowRoomController_v1.zip
    this link error, please fix the link.
    help me
    :(

    ReplyDelete
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