I’ve met with the Owner/CEO of Meter Group and he is 100% involved with AROYA directly. He came off very smart and did not come off to me as someone just looking to tax the industry. They definitely are not targeting smaller operations and almost all the negative feedback I’ve seen is from this group of growers.
IMHO, especially if you’re on metric, the continued software development, facility analytics and traceability integration makes it present substantial value. I also understand that many grows have a hard time justifying the expense, mostly smaller non licensed and non profitable. To each their own but the hardware and software is a great product. Agrowtek may be as well but I don’t see them technically offering even the same solution. Data logging and the sensors are just 1 small part of either platform.
@danielfp are you not trying to put together a subscription based platform/blog/whatever for cannabis specific knowledge? It will take time and effort into putting that together and needs to be monetized to make it worth it for you, correct? AROYA is doing continued software development (which I have seen first hand working with it for the last 4+ years) and I don’t see the massive difference, nor would I call either “green tax”. I do support AROYA and look forward to supporting your subscription as well.
Not only small growers fail to see this as the best solution. I have worked with several large scale, licensed, highly profitable growers who fail to see enough value at these price points. Especially to replace their own implementations.
Given the level of research and development these facilities do, they prefer custom or alternative platforms where they have absolute control over their data logging implementations.
I am sure Aroya works very well for many people who want something that works, dont mind the limitations, dont want to carry any R&D burden in irrigation, and have no issue paying for this privilege and fully take advantage of the support they offer. Which is fine and it is great that there is a company to fill that place. Of course, they - like everyone else - are open to criticism.
I am sure if I decided to offer a cannabis centric newsletter, many would criticize it as well. You definitely cannot appeal to everyone. Such is the burden when you develop anything! Thanks for voicing your support for my potential future work.
Just got my replacement sensor from growlink. New sensor to my door in under 5 days. Minimal questions asked(24 months from inspection).
If you are a customer of growlink, they will also share components from their systems with you to allow you to build out your own fertigation etc. This is a huge plus for anyone that’s doing consults/build outs.
Overall +1 for GrowLink. Definitely a good company making moves to consistently improve customer service and business in general.
Here’s a project I did to be able to calibrate and measure pwEC with generic resistive sensors and arduino (for a tenth of the cost of a Teros). I think it might be useful for someone.
The nerds on duty can test and send PRs. Soon I will release more Matlab data and maybe in the future more sensor models (probably a tool to calibrate others sensors models).
@oilengine This is very cool. Thanks for working on it and sharing it with us. I have long wanted to test this!
I tried low cost capacitive volumetric content sensors and it didn’t work out, they are just not good enough because of their low contact area and their often poor manufacturing. I have bought one of these sensors and will reproduce your setup.
I want to create a wireless version using some lithium battery packs and a NodeMCUv3.
I wanted to ask a couple of things.
Are you using an independent power supply to feed the THC-S? If so, what voltage are you using? If not, are you using the Arduino 5V directly?
Do you have any measurements on the power consumption of the THC-S?
@danielfp thanks for the support! Big fan and user of HB here.
I’m using the Arduino 5V directly, mainly due to the design of the sensor, which from what I noticed in my tests is a “passive” sensor, which means that it needs an externally controlled excitation source, in this case, by the Arduino, which sends an electrical signal only when taking a new measurement. I have had no success using a constant external source of energy.
Maybe that’s why many USB/RS485 adapters without current control for RS485 interface didn’t work in my tests. But I still think it was all my mistake (not a expert in RS485 interfaces or automation). I’ll test it later.
From what I got from the sensor tech specs:
Power supply DC4.5-30V
Max Power consumption 0.5W@24V DC
Current Drain (during 15-ms measurement):
– Minimum 3.0 mA
– Typical 3.5 mA
– Maximum 15.0 mA
@oilengine This is all gold, thanks for your answers. I will buy the RS485 controller you suggested and will attempt to create a battery operated setup for this sensor with wireless communication. Given your experience this seems completely plausible.
Does anyone have acclima sensors running on custom software? I have been using 0-10v output Chinese TDR probes for the past 2 years run into my PLC displaying volts output to grafana. I’m wondering if switching to acclima sensors could be done with a simple change out of equipment. Is the acclima sensor putting out rs485 or 0-10v?
Here’s what I have been using. These work great but they randomly fail after 1-2 runs.
Acclima sensors use a 3-wire SDI-12 interface, the same as MeterGroup sensors and others high end/professional sensors. You will need to adapt your software and maybe your hardware.
I use the acclima sensors with growlink. I’m like 99% sure the growlink controller is a particle.io board or an onion.io board build. The cost is not the barrier here, we just need a good programmer and we could cook a really good open source crop steering build that anyone could do with a raspberry pi or something mentioned above.
@oilengine would you be willing to contribute more code if we could get you some gear to play with? Maybe some sensors, some SoC or SBC’s. I’d be willing to participate and test, I just have pretty poor programming skills.
like @oilengine says aclima and most good wc/pwec sensors use sdi-12 as the comuniction protocol.
i had a decent setup that went, acclima sensor → sdi-12 serial/uart adapter → esp-32 → rasp pi4 (running home assistant, node red, graphana ect).
there are a few different sdi-12 serial/uart adapters out there, i used the one from dr liu https://liudr.square.site/, i belive its dr liu who pinnacle are working with for their new controller.
i recently got a growlink pic to play with and while it works ok for what it is the data visualization is piss poor, it could be so much better.
i agree the hardware cost to make a decent wc/pwec driven irrigation controller is cheap enough but like you i lack the coding skills to make a slick bit of code to tie it all together.
i have looked into what @danielfp mentioned earlier in this thread about sniffing the growlink api coms and it looks pretty straight forward, i will have a play around in the comming weeks and report back how i get on. it would be a big plus if we can pull the data into something like home assistant for logging and setting triggers ect.
Visualizations are much better with the pro version and the web based panel apposed to the app. They do charge for this feature. I think I pay $25/month for 1 controller 3 sensors and 1 user.
Still would much prefer grafana for visualization but it’s deffinitly better than the app.
Also, open sprinkler has a really good open source starting point for the software framework wise. I think it would be a great choice, as I really like how they structured their offering. Open source software solution, selling a pre built and supported hardware solution…
Of course.I’ve been working as a software engineer for several years and mess a bit with hardware and automation. We can start this open-source project and attract more programmers over time.
But I’ve found some problems with the sensor/adapter not taking new measurements without power cycle the SDI-12 interface (see my user “kroma” posts) and I’m thinking in use a ESP-32 to solve.
GrowLink is a production run https://store.particle.io/ the build is pretty simple too. Would be cool to start a slack or something and see if we can fill a gap as far as crop steering between like open sprinkler, agrowtek hxt hub and high end solutions from meter group etc.
Would be cool to incorporate IFTTT and other service into a controller as well. IFTTT is being picked up by lots of HVAC controllers etc.
Seems like the growlink api server is down It is definitely better when all the logging and data processing is done in-house, even if it’s more work to maintain it.
It is definitely better when all the logging and data processing is done in-house, even if it’s more work to maintain it.