Since marijuana was legalized in Massachusetts, I've been growing a legal amount of plants. But it's a lot of work.
As a software engineer, I try to automate as much of the task as possible - it's just more fun that way. I'm using basic mechanisms to control the lighting and temperatures of the room, but I'd like to also automate watering and mineral supplementation, and I think I need to program a control board to do this.
Does Sup Forums recommend a Rasperry Pi or Arduino for this? I need to run some triggers based off water level sensors I think. But this is my first foray into a non-virtual environment really.
Any advice would be greatly appreciated. Thank you.
Daniel Rodriguez
I know that undue expenditures aren't exactly business savvy, but why not just try both? Worst case is that you end up hating one platform or the other. What's more likely is that either can work and you'll find utility for the other in different contexts.
As far as money and time are concerned, it's not that much more to try both options simultaneously.
Connor Harris
Pi there are a bunch of automated projects for temps, lighting, and irrigation.
Parker Harris
when you harvest does the plant die and you have to start over?
Jaxon Turner
How the fuck did this plant ever survive in the wild if it requires THIS MUCH micromanagement in order to produce the drug part?
Sebastian King
It doesn't. The work is to maximize yield and potency in an indoor growth environment.
Oliver Gutierrez
no, it just won't give you buds again cause they only flourish once like many plants and it'll be useless
Jackson Davis
Yep. You have to hack the whole thing down. Feels bad man.
Eli Harris
>As a software engineer
why do you lie on the internet
Levi Evans
Why does it vibrate?
Jayden Gonzalez
There's probably a ventilator alongside it to cycle the humid air-
Jace Scott
Yeah, growing weed is an optimization game. It's a pretty fun one at that too because most of the work is set it and forget it. I fucked up my first grow a bit so my flowers are pretty tiny compared to the fat ones you can get, only because I didn't optimize the darkness levels initially when I first started. You need complete, total darkness to really stimulate bud production at first. Once I moved them and the rest of the grow setup into a spare closet in my condo that is fully sealed off from light, they finally started making some nice looking buds. I'll still get a couple ounces out of the grow but I could have gotten much more if I had a more systematic setup instead of doing things manually so often.
As far as hobbies go, it's rewarding in more than one way. I can donate up to a pound for $4,000 each (that's what they call it in this state). With a proper setup, I can legally produce up to 4.5 pounds a year. The math is good on that one.
Thomas Bailey
I think an arduino would work for this. I built a really basic plant waterer in high school that just used some transistors IIRC so it isn't really that hard. I had two probes (graphite cores from a pencil) in the soil, and when the soil got too dry, the resistance between them would increase too much. I had the same setup in a little reservoir of water. When the soil was dry and the reservoir had water, a pump would turn on and water would come out of some drip tubing. I'd imagine this would be a lot easier with an arduino, and you could have multiple sets of probes. Also you can get knock off arduinos for really cheap.
Jason Wood
If you want something that just werks, get an off the shelf greenhouse controller. If you want something simple to hack on for fun, use an Arduino. The rpi is a complete meme outside education.
Christian Bennett
you can buy something like that at home depot, why make it yourself? it's only like $40 for what you want assuming you have all other materials already
David Russell
Nigga, just get an Arduino. The Mega328 is a bomb-ass chip that does all kinds of shit for you with just a little register manipulation.
Ian King
Dude what state.
Camden Miller
There's a bonsai method, though due to the natural lifecycle it will inevitably die.
Colton Taylor
Seconding Arduinos. They're dirt cheap, really easy to set up, have an absolute metric shitload of documentation, accessories and tutorials, and the ATmega is easily powerful enough to handle those tasks.
Jonathan Hughes
It grows just about everywhere. If you just let it grow it will grow but it wont necessarily be useful as a drug.
The drug part is actually a flower on the female plants that when left alone in the wild blooms and is fertilized by a male plant which then causes it to release seeds. The seeds take away a lot of the potency of the drug so people growing for consumption have to remove all male plants before they're allowed to mature. If you just let it grow in the wild it may get fertilized and ruin the whole thing.
Eli Price
>marijuana I bet you pronounce it as "mah-ree-ah-juh-ah-nah" Fucking cultural appropriation tonguelets
Luke Cox
calm down jorge
Eli Walker
Is smell not a concern in a condo?
Asher Morgan
>male plants >female plants Looks like someone missed their biology classes.
Hunter Wilson
Use arduino, it's literally made for this kind of project. Only thing it lacks is a real time clock (unless they added one in a recent one), but they are cheap as fuck anyways.
Sebastian Allen
The male and female parts generally occur on separate plants. There are occasionally plants that have both parts but it's not as common as with other flowering plants.
Brandon Williams
It did survive in the wild. It just didn't get you quite as stoned before it evolved in basements and grow houses to maximize 'bang for the buck'. The illegal status is much the reason for this.