Startup Idea: Automated Hydroponics Management System
I am a leading cultivator for a large-scale professional cannabis farm (it's legal here; don't start a damn lecture). A significant portion of our facility houses an indoor hydroponics (feeding plants with nutrients suspended in an aqueous solution instead of soil) system that feeds up to hundreds of vegetative and flowering plants at any time. One part of my job, or anyone else available in the hydro facilities, is to, every day, top off the vats with water and nutrients mixed at a specific ratio depending on the specific strain and point in the growth cycle. As these vats are 100-200 gallons in capacity, and the purified water used to supply them is fed from a gravity-powered tank, this tends to be a time-consuming if not labour intensive process that can take up to two hours or more of my and my associates' otherwise valuable time.
For some time now I've had an idea to automate this system. It would simply involve a water level detector (I don't have a specific product in mind for this as yet) in each vat that is compatible with sending its readings to a computer system. When the level drops below that vat's minimum threshold (which would have to be specified in the software by the user), the system would engage a simple network of either pumps or solenoid valves to deliver water to fill a given vat to its desired level, then add nutrients and pH balancers via hoses from a collection of central storage tanks in sequences and ratios, again determined by the user. Some manner of in-line measurement process would be necessary, either by filling secondary reservoirs with a specific amount of each nutrient/balancer using a fluid level detector, or using precision sensors to measure based on time and flow rate.
The ratios would have to use data from our PPM/pH meters. We currently use high-quality self-calibrating multimeters from BlueLabs, and I do believe they are compatible with sending their data to a computer. Desired PPM/pH would have to be specified by the end user in the software, as these figures are very much dependent on a harvest batch's cannabis strain and stage of growth, and are consequently subject to semi-periodic changes.
This system could also work on a timer, where it simply fills to the desired level a given time(s) of day before adding nutrients.
Ultimately I feel this would not be difficult for a developer to implement, but bear in mind that the software would have to accommodate the general modular characteristics of most large-scale hydro networks, e.g. the addition/modification of equipment such as more/less pumps, vats, etc. The obvious benefit is freeing up labour resources that can be directed towards managing the plants themselves. Furthermore, given a little creativity, I'm confident this could produce more consistent nutrient balance over a given 24 hour period, as currently we only check/adjust the vats once per day. Obviously, this could easily apply to large-scale horticulture in general, and not just cannabis. I've only got the idea thought out for now; to be honest spending all day working out systems like this isn't a part of my regular cultivation duties. The only solution for the time being is simply have someone commit the time every day to do it manually.
Submitter: Dr. Dankenstein