Knowing your grow environment - Part 1 - Frequency of data

With the environment your plants are growing in being one of if not THE most important elements to get right, how often you observe that environment can make quite a difference on really understanding what is going on.

If you lived in your grow environment 24/7 you would be completely in tune with what was going on. You’d know how the temperature and humidity changed over the day, you’d know where the hot/cold and dry/damp areas within the environment were. You would also know this because you would move around environment throughout the day.

So when it comes to monitoring your grow environment ideally you want to be taking readings as often as possible and in as many different locations as possible.

In this post I wanted to take a look at the difference it makes depending on often you take readings and plotted them out. The below charts are all from the same time frame in the same environment just with additional points filtered out to reduce the number observed readings.

Chart 1 the data readings are taken every 30 seconds and you can see all of the minor fluctuations from fans etc…

Chart 2 the data readings are taken every 5 min, this still shows a lot of the finer detail

Chart 3 here the data readings are taken every 15 min. At this point you can see we start to loose some of the finer detail which is clearly highlighted in the Stability chart

Chart 4 data points are taken every hour

Chart 5 this is data observed every 4 hours and is probably about how often the average grower is checking in on their grow environment.

Chart 6 data taken every 8 hours

Chart 7 data every 12 hours you are not really getting anything more than this with a standard digital hygrometer

It would be great to hear from everyone, @mastergrowers and @growopowners on recording environmental data associated with your grow environment.

I will be doing a Part 2 taking a look at the difference the number of sensors and where they are placed makes when it comes to getting the full picture.

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Environmental data is key to sustained success in achieving consistent quality product and reducing cost of goods sold in today’s evolving cannabis market.

My Link4 controllers log data every few seconds and can generate reports that I find extremely valuable as a grower…the downside is these units only incorporate one sensor per room and there can me hidden microclimates hiding within any cultivationn space, “unseen” by the single sensor.

I’m looking forward to working with TheMinder when I get back to the grow.

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awesome info!
thanks, do you have info on what sensors were used (and can be used) and the hardware info?

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Mike,

Data was taken using a DHT22 for the ambient data and a DS18b20 for the probe data (the humidity for the probe readings is from the DHt22) both sensors were checked against two UKAS certified and calibrated sensors to confirm tolerance levels. All of the sensors we send out are checked against these two units to ensure, at least at the time of sending, the sensors were correct per manufactures tolerances.

We are working on a number of additional sensor units to be rolled out in 2019 these include but are not limited to C02, Moisture and Light

Hope that answers your question, feel free to ask more and I will answer as best I can without giving too much away :slight_smile:

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This answers a good deal but leaves more burning questions, stand by for pm!
Thanks for taking the time to reply, too.

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