A few months ago I talked about how you could build a simple sensor station for your hydroponic projects using an arduino (see here). However this small project used the relatively cheap - but I have found not very robust - pH/EC probes and boards from gravity which makes it a poorer choice for a…
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Five dos and don’ts for automated pH control in hydroponics
The pH is one of the most important variables to control in hydroponic culture as it plays a key role in the availability of different ions and their absorption dynamics. Although most growers control pH manually it is often desirable to implement automatic pH control so that you can ensure that your solution always stays…
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A simple Arduino based sensor monitoring platform for Hydroponics
Last time I posted about automation I talked about how I use an Arduino to automate the monitoring and management of my home hydroponic system. Today I want to talk about how you can build an Arduino based station to monitor the most important variables of your hydroponic crop without having to solder anything, use…
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Measuring ion concentrations in hydroponics using electronic tongues
One of the biggest problems in hydroponic research is the measuring of individual ion levels in hydroponic solutions. Right now there is no commercial solution for the accurate tracking of individual ions in hydroponic solutions and this makes it impossible to track ions in real-time to measure how nutrient absorption reacts to different environmental and…
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Automated media moisture monitoring in hydroponic crops
Irrigation control is one of the most important things to control in a hydroponic crop. Irrigate too frequently with a media that has high water retention and your plants will start to wilt as their roots die due to lack of oxygen and reductive conditions, water too sparingly and your plants will not grow as…
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Automating a hydroponic system: Sensors and monitoring
Hydroponic systems benefit greatly from gathering more information as this gives the grower the ability to better diagnose problems and better understand the evolution of their hydroponic crops. Usually growers limit the information they gather to single sensor measurements carried out either at different points during the day or even only when nutrient solutions need…
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