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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 and Windows. HydroBuddy is released under the GPL license. For Linux or Windows installers are included. You can also use on MacOSX if you compile from source.
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These are some of HydroBuddy's features :
- 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
- 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 calculation results to a CSV file
- Tutorial tabs showing and explaining the main features of the program !
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 by using the contact form with your requirements to receive a quote.
If you are using HydroBuddy for academic purposes please cite its use as follows:
Daniel Fernandez, "HydroBuddy: An open source nutrient calculator for hydroponics and General agriculture", v1.6, url: http://scienceinhydroponics.com , 2016
You can download the program through the following links:
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Just unzip the program and run the hydrobuddy.exe file. Note this binary is ONLY compatible with Windows 64-bit. If you want to use on a Windows 32-bit computer you will need to compile from source yourself.
Note for MacOS users: The latest MacOS versions won't allow you to open Hydrobuddy correctly unless you compile it within your own computer. To do this you'll need to build HydroBuddy on your own MacOS computer. Follow these instructions to install Lazarus and then compile the HydroBuddy project from source.
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Please note that the software is provided "as is" (no support available for free). If you want to get a support quote please contact me via the website's contact form.
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