Science in Hydroponics

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HydroBuddy is a completely free and open source program for the calculation of nutrient solutions for hydroponics and general agriculture built by me – Daniel Fernandez – based on my experience in hydroponics as a professional chemist. This piece of software was coded from the ground up using the Lazarus open source programming suite and implemented using appropriate database solutions as well as a  powerful linear equation solving algorithms from AlgLib. HydroBuddy is available for Linux, Windows and MacOSX (v >10.4). HydroBuddy is released under the GPL license. For Linux or Windows installers are included, for Mac simply extract the zip file and run the Hydrobuddy application.

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These are some of HydroBuddy’s features :

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• Calculates the weights of specific substances needed to arrive at specified concentrations of different elements (formulation to salt weights calculation)
• Easily fine tune your salt weights after calculations.
• Calculations in ppm, mmol/L, mol/L and meq/L.
• Calculate liquid additions in mL and add any custom substances as liquids
• Edit the percentage elemental composition of each substance or add new ones to fit your needs
• Powerful open source linear equation solver provided by AlgLib
• Always tries to find the best mathematical fit to a formulation by a given group of substances
• Allows to get the concentration values for the addition of a certain specified amount of substances (salt weights to formulation calculation)
• Easy-to-use interface for the addition, edition and assignation of substances to calculations
• Data logging module to help you track the EC and pH of your crop
• EC prediction module based on an empirical mathematical modification of a calculation based on limiting molar conductivities
• Use the resulting weights of a formulation calculation to perform a calculation of the opposite nature and vice versa (easily allows you to see the effect of manual modifications)
• Calculations for both direct additions and A+B concentrated solutions
• Use any custom substance as a part of an A+B concentrated solution calculation
• “Copy Commercial Nutrient” module which allows you to copy the ppm results of a commercial nutrient formulation
• Water quality module allows you to include water quality analysis within the calculations
• Adequate implementations of instrumental and gross errors with custom instrument precision input
• Proper database implementation allows you to easily save your custom formulations
• Set default water quality and data log data sets that load automatically on program startup
• Program automatically updates on startup (windows version only)
• Save and load formulations using any concentration unit.
• Choose between grams or ounces
• Choose between liters, gallons and cubic meters for volume inputs
• Ability export data log or calculation results to a CSV file
• Tutorial tabs showing and explaining the main features of the program !

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The program allows anyone to easily carry out calculations for the preparation of nutrient solutions, a very cumbersome task that can take a lot of time and effort when done manually. If you’re having trouble with HydroBuddy and you would like to purchase support please email me at dfernandezp@unal.edu.co with your requirements to receive a quote.

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You can download the program through the following links:

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