Ton Posted April 4, 2014 Share Posted April 4, 2014 Hi all, During my last cluster period I started trying shrooms, and was very pleased with the results when compared to the awful stuff I was taking during my last cluster periods (loads of Verapamil, sumatriptan etc). As I regard the shrooms as medicine and want to know exactly what I´m doing with the dosage, I want my growing and drying process to be as consistent as possible. The temperature in my house can vary a lot and so does the amount of sun of course, so I can´t do that much to control the growing. But the drying I can... I have central heating I can place the shrooms on but they are either to hot or to cold, no consistency. So I have built my own Arduino controlled shroom dryer :-) I place it on my radiator. If it gets too hot a fan starts running to cool it down, the fan automatically speeds up if it needs to cool more. And when the radiator is off and is cold some warming mats in the drying tin get turned on, gradually increasing in heat until the right temperature is achieved. Also, if the humidity gets too high the fan does a quick purge of the air in the tin. All in all, I keep the temperature within a few degrees of 32 centigrade. Total cost for the Arduino board and parts was around 50USD, and I needed a proper power supply which cost me around 35 USD. I guess I did not save much money but I did have fun building it. Included are some pics. If anybody is interested in building their own I can post the part list and source code. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ThatHurtsMyHead Posted April 4, 2014 Share Posted April 4, 2014 Ton, Now that's slick! I don't think I'd use something like that for drying, but my mind is working on 1,000 other things I could use it for. I just did some reading on the Arduino website. It leaves quite a bit to be desired as far as explaining what the board can be connected to. (or if it can be loaded with your program and run autonomously etc.) I've been all over their website and can't find something as simple as a list of Input / Output devices. J Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Ton Posted April 4, 2014 Author Share Posted April 4, 2014 Arduino rocks, once you get the hang of it, it's dead simple. I can post my wiring and code later if you like, once you read the code you'll get it. You can connect the Arduino board to several 'shields' or just connect to the pins directly with sensors etc, to get a fast impression search for 'Arduino shield' on eBay. And it can run autonomously, I just had a laptop connected for a while to check my temperatures but it runs standalone. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ThatHurtsMyHead Posted April 4, 2014 Share Posted April 4, 2014 Ton, They had a ton of Shields listed on the website, but not a single description of what a shield is. I actually learned more reading about components on Amazon in 5 minutes than an hour on their website. Is a shield just a secondary micro-controller used for secondary I/O or I/O expansion? I wrote VB, VBS and some C back in the day. From what I saw in one example it looks similar to VB and simple (from one "hello world" example anyway) I might be dating myself by the reference to Hello World, not many would get that aren't developers here. J Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ThatHurtsMyHead Posted April 4, 2014 Share Posted April 4, 2014 Ton, Oh, and I've written some G-Code to operate 3 CNC machines I designed (Mill, Lathe and a 2X5 foot plasma table. I started out with controllers made in China, and paid for that $50 savings by wasting months of time troubleshooting. Changed over to Gecko Controllers and everything worked perfect in less than an hour of tuning. (As a side note, if you want some controllers I'll sell 3, really cheap... ha ha). Precision is just fine for woodwork or something similar, but metalwork needs much closer tolerances than that those controllers could do. J Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
weatherman Posted April 4, 2014 Share Posted April 4, 2014 Hey Ton, That is the coolest device ever! You get the award for "Best Apparatus Designed for Helping CH'rs Get Relief". I really admire the ingenuity and talent that went into creating/designing/building the drier.  Best of all ..... it simply works. I've used an old Ronco Food Dehydrator that I got on Ebay for $20. Load it up, plug it in and wait 24 hrs for cracker-dry results. I keep it in the garage where temps very from 45-65F, humidity from 30-90%. Very simple and effective. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Ton Posted April 4, 2014 Author Share Posted April 4, 2014 @ThatHurtsMyHead Hello World is eternal :-) If you can get DIY CNC machine workin properly this kind of stuff should be easy. I'm no expert programmer, I just use stuff like VBS and Powershell for my work. I looked at building a CNC once as I wanted to use it to make PCBs, but it would need to be very accurate so I decided to wait till I had a good excuse to splurge on a ready made one. Still waiting. Yes, the shields are just extra electronics on a PCB that is sized to fit straight on top of the Arduino board, saves some wiring work. BTW, there are many diferent types of boards. Most boards like the Uno have connectors for experimentation, but if you are not worried about soldering you can get a tiny Arduino Nano clone for around 5$. Same programming etc, just smaller. I may actually be interested in some controllers, I will be in the US in a couple of weeks time... What type are they? @Weatherman: thanks for the compliment :-) I did look for a dehydrator shortly, but they seem to be thin on the gournd here in the Netherlands. I could probably have found one for less than I paid for my components but I had that stuff lying around anyway and I liked the idea of using the heating (it was winter) in my home already. Also, I read somewhere that some of the dehydrators get too hot for shrooms but I guess it worked for you. It certainly looks a lot less messy than my project :-) As I have made this, I was thinking of desiging something to keep my growing kits at perfect temperature and humidity as well. If only I could control the sun with Arduino.... If there are people really interested in this stuff I could potentially write a full manual etc. It is not hard but then I'm a computer guy, I'm used to this stuff. I reckon with a good search for components I could halve the cost, and could potentially preprogram boards for people. Like I said, it was a bit of fun for me, and also I did watch the whole setup like a hawk the first day I had it running, waiting for the smell of burning chips or something catching fire ;-) Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ThatHurtsMyHead Posted April 4, 2014 Share Posted April 4, 2014 Ton, I've got 2ea 3-axis and 1ea 4-axis controllers. Looks like they're about $58 bucks on the market now. http://www.ebay.com/itm/4-Axis-CNC-Stepper-Motor-Driver-Board-Controller-4-Engraving-Machine-3-5A-TB6560-/310894441515?pt=LH_DefaultDomain_0&hash=item4862c0b42b I'd give you all three for $20 each and throw in 3 electronic relays for free. (Think I paid about $120 for each boards and $20 for each relay). I'd just like to seem them go to a good home  You've got me contemplating some gadgets with the Arduino controllers. I have the machines setup so the computer controls not only the 3X axis, but also the machine on/off and the cooling fluid pump on/off. Looks pretty sweet to lock in a piece of metal hit the go button on the Mach3 (the G-Code interpreter I use to run the machines). Then it runs till the part is finished and shuts it's cooling and power off. The Plasma table uses a blowback start on the Plasma torch. Nothing but cool is all I can say... (yea geeked out... ha ha) J Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
spiny Posted April 4, 2014 Share Posted April 4, 2014 You guys are just too freaking smart! 8-) Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ThatHurtsMyHead Posted April 5, 2014 Share Posted April 5, 2014 Spiny, Ah don't give me that.  I know you're a world class welder. My welds look more like someone splattered the metal on instead of actually welded it. Funny thinking about it, On more than one occasion I've spent more time grinding than welding just so I wasn't so embarrassed of how bad it looked ha ha... I had to invest time in machines because my work by hand looks so bad. ;D I'd love to see something you make one of these days J Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Ton Posted April 7, 2014 Author Share Posted April 7, 2014 @Spiny: Nah, everybody's got their thing, right? We just think in 0's and 1's a bit more :-) @ThatHurtsMyHead:Cool, I would like to buy those from you. Sounds ideal for a robotics project. I will send you a PM. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
spiny Posted April 7, 2014 Share Posted April 7, 2014 THMH: You are too kind. Ton: I quit playing with bread boards 20 years ago! I studied robotics and automation in the 80's. I might still be able to count in binary though. 8-) Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ThatHurtsMyHead Posted April 7, 2014 Share Posted April 7, 2014 Ton, 2 CNC controllers, 2 power supplies and 3 electronic relays. J Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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