A small computer controlled, ultrasonic, vertical cabinet

[hgys]

Short introduction. I'm an overgrow refuge, still looking for a new home. Although the membership here is small, the ideas discussed are more in line w/ what I'm interested in. The beginning of this thread actually lives here.
http://www.gardenscure.com/420/aeroponics/98500-small-computer-controlled-ultrasonic-vertical-cabinet.html
If posting the link isn't kosher, I apologize. The vertical part of this project, and the feeding strategy originated w/ the old CW, and I'd like to give thanks to those people who sparked the realization of the cabinet.

This is still a work in progress, not a tutorial, but some interesting things have come up. Lamp is a 250w HPS. Feeding is modified Lucas formula, automated. Method is aeroponic using the under $30 mainland mart single head foggers. First three attempts were highly satisfactory. The previous 2 were failures. The first a result of a fan failure, resulting in burnt roots. The second was the result of a brain fart, after replacing the defective fan. Result, burned roots again, and an early shut down.

[hgys]

This is a shot of the final (at least for now) fogger design. Relatively compact, and self cleaning. Early iterations have gone through three complete grows w/o cleaning or replacement. The wires leading from the black bucket are for a Sharp distance sensor that will be used as a fog sensor. It provides a DC voltage that's proportional to the density of the fog. Hopefully by the end of next weekend I'll have a prototype control working that uses fog density as the feedback element. The previous runs were done w/ a cheap short cycle timer. I feel I have to stick w/ the previous thread, at least until the control is finished and instructions are posted.

My main purpose is to show that the cheap ultrasonic foggers are a viable technology.

[hgys]

Yeilds were OK, but nothing spectacular. Two plant system, 5 weeks in veg. A little over 4 ounces of dry bud. One of the purposes of the project is to provide enough controls to make repeatable runs, w/ the ability to fine tune parameters, w/ minimum effort. Nutrients are continuously monitored for conductivity, and add back is done w/ surplus perstaltic pumps. No hint of the PH problems others have posted about.

[Liam]

I've cloned with fog in a Coliseum, and also had fog added to my aeroponic (misters) Coliseum. I was one of the ones posting about a POSSIBLE pH problem I noticed, I believed that it had something to do with the fact some of the nutrients were settling out of my nutes though. I used ultrasonic humidifiers so I had no way of mixing the nutes, I'm glad you have put the 'pH change question' out of my mind for certain now though.

Now, I got busted after those experiments, both my Coliseums cut in half, and currently on a 1 yr conditional discharge, so I never got to do any more experiments. Lost most my threads when Overgrow went down as well...

Now for the Coliseums since they absorb so much heat using fog alone won't work, since you have to cool the root zone and the only easy way of doing that is sprayed chilled nutes... although you could make an elaborate root zone air conditioner, and insulate the root zone; not worth it in my mind.

I'm also the one that 'proved' that the Shira fogger was a ripoff and that any pond fogger, ultrasonic humidifier will work just as good. But another thing I was trying to communicate on this issue was that there is a huge difference between growing with dry fog and just getting your roots wet with fog.

Do you have a picture of your roots, I can tell you from them if your actually doing 'real' dry fog growing or your just wetting the roots. See, with dry fog, the roots look like a giant mass of white fuzz, otherwise they look normal. Curious if you pulled off a dry fog system.

I came up with other methods of dry fogging, pictures of that are on ddoc.net

http://ddoc.net/showthread.php?s=&threadid=643