Useing a computer to control a greenhouse

[Paul]

I have just built a twinskin green house for tropical aquatic plants,
I would like to be able to run a bunch of 120mm fans from the power supply.
How many 120s could I run?
Some software monitoring will be useful i.e. temp,humidity,lighting,vents,wind direction and fans running etc Is this possible? If so any ideas on 1:building some programes or modifying and how I would go about setting up the relevant sensors and controls.

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[Solid Snake]

Depends how big your greenhouse is ...

Uhm .. you could do the wind thing by getting a RPM fan sensor, it would sensor the RPM the wind is pus-s-s-hing the fan, and you could deduce things...

Sam as temporatures, get some Senfu ones ...

What would be more practical, is getting some hardware to do these such as DSE kitsets.

You wouldn't need a fast CPU for this though... something like a Pentium 1 could do the stuff your asking for, unless you want to do simultaneuos things with it....

[thabass]

Ok apps are out there but they cost big $$$

priva and plant plan are the most popular.


The fans are used to control air flow. You most likely only need one fan. Something with a low RPM and you do not want to create to much turbulence. You also need vents these allow the air to come in/out. Depending on your setup. You also need to make sure the fan is installed to suck and not blow. Blowing air over plants for proloned periods can stunt there growth.

For temp sensors, i would not use once made the pc use. But get once that are water resistant. You can get all sorts of flash probes that tell you the humidity/temp/wind/rain level with outputs that go into a pc. But they all cost $$$. I also like analog humidity meters as opposed to digital once as the digital tends to break easy.

The old mans 3 hot house tomatoes (12,000 vines) run on a p166 with 32mb ram, 540mb hd. And its comming up to its 8th year of 24/7 operation.

Search google and you should find what your after..

[MrThc]

yes it is all quite possible.. a microprocessor like a basic STAMP would probably the best way to start. I know someone who has been experimenting with these for greenhouses for about 2 years now. you can email Mark @ paulus@gnomegrow.co.nz , he can most likely help you out

[Geek4Life]

Originally posted by MrThc
yes it is all quite possible.. a microprocessor like a basic STAMP would probably the best way to start. I know someone who has been experimenting with these for greenhouses for about 2 years now. you can email Mark @ paulus@gnomegrow.co.nz , he can most likely help you out
Yeah the basic STAMP would do the trick, but they can't multi-task. Been playing around with them for the past couple of weeks at College, they're capable of quite a lot.

hmmm, I wonder what MrTHC's friend grows in greenhouses :D

[Paul]

The 120s I was thinking about using in corner type areas to help with condensation, and thought that 12DC is a better way to go than 240mains. Don't need sparks jumping out if it happened to get a drop of water in it.

Greenhouse is 10mx10m and will hold 25'000lts of water at 22/25 degC, Still working on ventilation methods and how many times I will turn the rooms air over per hr at this stage it may be replaced at 3x hr.
This is why a lot of those sensors are needed don't want the vents wide open etc while I am away and the weather turns nasty.

All I have found are full on kits with all the gear to go with it and a huge $$$$ tag.
Will keep looking around for now I suppose, thanks guys.

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