Caregiver Help.

[billmelater]

Hello, I have a question that I need some help with. I am not able to be around my grow, it is a couple of hours away and I have a family as well. I know I need to be around and I can travel but 7 days a weel is not in the cards. Any help out there? I was thinking of setting up video monitors or something I can access via the web, making sure timers go on when they are suooosed to, etc I had someone to help me but they backed out so it is only me. Does any body have a solution or instructions for me with this issue?

 

I will be able to travel to my patients home, so a supply of meds will always be around. THanks for any help you can give me.

[Dman]

Video computer surveillance is very nice. I intend to use it. But my question would be: Grow takes work everyday how are you to do daily chores? You might get by a day or two but even advanced set ups require attention.

[billmelater]

I would be able to be around aprox5 days a week, Thanks for your answer, any more advice would be appreciated.

[boroboro]

Is this a soil grow?  If it's soil or something like it (i.e. coco, pro-mix, other soilless mixes, etc.) check out Blumat drippers.  Automatic watering based on the soil moisture content.  I haven't used them, but Lazyman over on icmag did a pretty respectable grow with them.  They do reportedly need some fine-tuning and setup, but after that they're stable.

 

 

 

 

 

[billmelater]

I was looking at a hydro grow.

[LongHairBri]

big daddy system is reliable and needs little work. once dialed in with stable nutes you can go 2-3 days w/o worry. I check every other day in bloom room. they drink about a gallon each per day, if you go to long w/o water replacement the nute levels get pretty high. in grow they can go almost a week w/o water replacement. I use nutes with ph buffers and haven't had to raise/lower yet! Hell, I haven't even checked ph in a few weeks. I should sell my pen!!

[Dman]

Well 5 days a week should be fine. I'm a bit of an automation person my self. I'm not into buying complete systems as they always have issues or need tweaking. So I built my own. If you need any help with probes or senors Pm me. Helping people with other setups can only bring knowledge on improving your own.

[Miracle Man]

I guess my question is how advanced do you want to be? As I am preparing to become a CG I will be in a similar situation and have a basic design for a system that should allow me to be away for a few days (hopefully more) at a time once it's dialed in and still be able to continuously monitor and make adjustments from anywhere with an internet connection.

 

Just to give you an idea of what is possible:

 

Video cams are a good start, but if you have the money a quality pan/tilt/zoom cam that is controllable via the web would come in very handy. Some of them have really good optical zoom that would allow you to get very good close up of your plants.

 

X-10 controls function as timers but again can be monitored/operated via the web. These can handle lights, pumps, fans, co2 controls and with some engineering they can even raise and lower your lights (and possibly even move the p/t/z cam around the room to allow for different views)

 

Battery backups (UPS) are definitely needed for every critical function, although they probably won't work for the lights. Pumps, fans, timers, etc can still function in case of power outage.

 

For my application redundancy is important to me. I plan on having a back up pump for watering, again controlled by X-10, that would not be on a timer but will allow me to activate it from anywhere in case the main pump fails. I still haven't figured out how I will be able to tell if the first one has failed though, I'm thinking about some type of flow meter.

 

I will be using Hempy Buckets which don't really need to be watered more than every other day or so, so depending on the number of patients/plants a large reservoir could last for a week or more if you really needed it to.

 

Of course all of this can be very expensive (but compared to buying meds at a dispensary it would pay for itself rather quickly) and doesn't do anything for those emergency situations (mites, light failure etc) but based on what you've said you can easily get away with visiting every 2-3 days once you have it dialed in.

 

Just my thoughts, hope it helps!

 

MM

[billmelater]

Thanks for all your help, I will probably be in contact, I would like to get this going asap, but that tough economy thing has me down a bit.