Entertainment & Artistry > Sports/Outdoors & Manpoon

Monitoring my hydroponics

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Mike:
Here is this morning's haul with the second type of tomatoes

Mike:
So, was all excited to convert the setup to the new PCB and connectors.  Pulled the old setup down, took everything part, unsoldered headers, resoldered new ones, converted direct soldered wires to crimped connectors, etc.  Get everything done, connect it to the Raspberry Pi 4 and the thing won't boot up.  Pull things off, and undo all the new stuff and no luck.  Going through the troubleshooting and it is pointing to the SD card being bad.  Which means I'm losing all the data I had (I hadn't gotten to remote backing it up :mad:)  And of course everything is closed.  So, ordering a new card for pickup tomorrow.  Hopefully it'll work.  Still hoping that I might be able to pull data off the old card but not in high hopes

Mike:
Got a new card, put the OS on it, and the PI booted right up.  Which is good but probably does mean the old card is shot.  Might see if I can't mount it or use a repair utility.

Gonna set up a Windows share and have it dump the database to it as a backup.

Mike:
Well, it looks like my soldering skills aren't that great.  The daughter board that I pulled the existing headers off of and put new headers are has a short between Vcc and ground.  Likely, I already had a replacement on its way.  But it won't be here until Friday.  So, probably just going to put it back together with the existing components and then next weekend add the new sensor.

Mike:
Made an album of the change over work.  https://photos.app.goo.gl/NaPJyipcycshSo366

Some lessons so far:

[*] I should have fucking used locking headers for the temperature probes!  The friction between the pin and the connector isn't always strong enough
[*] I remember why I decided to focus on software rather than hardware
[*] Needed to get measurements of the connectors so I could ensure enough spacing between sets of headers.  There is barely enough space and that is just luck
[*] For my soldering skill level I should have given more space between the trace and the pads
[*] I originally designed the board to be a HAT but as I dug into the spec and looked at my future goals I realized there was no good reason for that and it would be far more effort than it is worth.
[*] I took long to do this and getting the probes into the right spot is damn near impossible at this stage.
[*] The two coax probes aren't supported on the far end so it kind of flops around.  I think the future versions will use the newer version of the board which has mounting holes
[/list]

At this stage my frustration level is at an all time high.  After adding the new isolation board all three of the temperature probes came loose and after getting them back on two are reporting max temperature.  Debating pulling everything out and just doing this next season in a new set up.  Thinking about a system where the maintenance area is set away from the main basin with something to keep the roots out.  Then having some probe areas there so they are clean and easy to access.

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