Greenhouse ventilation

There are lots of such sms temperature monitors around on the web /amazon/ebay etc though most are £100 +.

If you are into diy you can built your own for a fraction of the price; using a cheap tesco sim card.
Pic below of the one I built, can provide full plans /code if anyone interested.

Also have an Arduino controlling the greenhouse heating, just experimenting with feedback to the house as in the screenshot.

 

I don't want to be stuck at home traipsing up and down the garden path all day (and all night?).

I want to be able, when anywhere away from home, to operate some basic controls and receive alerts, such as low/high temps and be able to turn on auxillary heating/ventilation, or even control an automatic watering system.

About 20 years ago, after dire warnings of forthcoming online competition from abroad, I diversified into Facilities Management, Energy Management and Energy Purchasing (plus some other stuff).

So even 20 years ago I could monitor remote sites and adjust heating controls using dedicated telephone lines and modems.

 

Thats all perfectly possible via your smart phone these days.
You can even make your own controlling App with the many free App creators available on the web.

Its just a case of how much you are willing to pay for a ready made system that you can customise to your exact needs, not cheap though, or if you are in to, or want to try diy electroincs and have the time to develop something to your exact needs, then you can use something like a £5 Arduino (clone) board to both control your heating and watering automatically and to send out sms alerts and receive sms instructions back to update various functions like extra watering or ventilation.

The only caveat is the mains wiring in such a greenhouse environment.

example - ( not mine)

 

I'm lucky that I am home most of the day because I operate my business from home. I do have remote thermometers and wouldn't need to go into the greenhouses to know what the temps are but like @shiney, I do go in several times of day. The thermometers are antisocial and only talk to the reciever, not to the plants and some of those plants need a good talking to to make them behave or buck up!

 

Well will have to update my controller so it talks to the plants every hour and plays some music the rest of the time ... not sure if I need to add a local accent to the voice though ?

 

I suppose that could be used to control the supply to a plug in extension lead (rather than hard wiring it to a specific fitting) to get around Building Regs, but would only be interested in off the shelf products rather than DIY solutions.

Is there anything I could connect (from my greenhouse) to my router and control it using internet rather than mobile? (I have an enormous cable to connect, bought for a silly low price).

 

If you are looking for something ready made, then you really need to detail what it is you want to control, eg Greenhouse heater, Watering Timer, Remote Temperature Monitoring .

Knowing that you can search for something ready made that can be used/adapted, though these days it mainly wireless stuff because most folk do not want the trouble of running long cables like you have.

I've used an old version of these more modern wireless temp sensors to monitor greenhouse and outside temperatures, some do min /max recording as well.

Oregon Scientific UK | Innovative Lifestyle & Consumer Electronics

Places like this also do ready made greenhouse specific devices.

Simply Control, garden accessories, horticultural supplies

 

Can't see anything useful there. Appears to me that trying to use that stuff would result in a complex tangle of different, unintegrated monitoring, alert and control systems.

 

Yes, probably true.

Just that there is not a large enough market for anyone to commercially design such a complete greenhouse system to suit the home gardener , let alone the electrical safety issues of using it in a domestic greenhouse.

I designed and web published a micro controller system for my marine fish tank years ago, but only gave out the low voltage micro circuitry, detailing mains electrical just a recipe for the disaster, which the compensation solicitors would love !

 

Reminds me of store that would be continually telling potential customers all day every dsy that they didn't stock what they wanted because there wasn't any call for them. But it's a global market these days, only the plug and sockets need to differ.

All I'd like is a main unit that will connect to my wifi and have say 3 sockets. Sensors such as temperature, humidity, moisture, movement, etc. would be seperate, wireless [1] units, communicate with the main unit and have parameters set up on pc or app, and alerts would be received on phone. Using remote monitoring/alerts the sockets could be used to control heating/ventilation/watering/etc. and if the movement sensor was purchased and added to the system remote viewing would also be possible. And a phone sim capability would enable loss of power alerts.

[1] I've already got cables to 3 growlights, lead light, 3 propagators, heat mat and fan heater/cooler and don't want any more cables.

 

Ah, thats a bit of a change, from what you said earlier thought you wanted a wired system and not using your mobile .. but never mind.

With my fish tank and greenhouse controllers etc I have most of those functions inc camera /movement activated already, however as you want a ready made system you might have to search hard to find one single unit that will do that; though expect it will be costly, more likely a custom built option made for you from an existing unit ?

Do you use any temperature controllers on your existing heaters / propagators ?
My current project is using 4 temp sensors, 1 for outside temp , the other 3 to control the heating of the whole greenhouse and 2 props.

 

Two, one for keeping greenhouse heating above a minimum temp, and another for growbox ventilation to keep the temperature down when the lights and propagators all on.

The idea of a single unit is so that I don't get the situation in my greenhouse (again) of one controller turning the heating up as the other controller attempts to vent the hot air and my heating bills go (literally) through the roof.

 

Will all your requirements , sounds like you need to commission a custom unit.

If you search the web you will find some smaller commercial units like this one that might be adapatable, though doubtless expensive.
Greenhouse Controller - BWI Grower Technical Sales

You might find some diyers who will program and build one for you, but that might prove problematic as many just cobble together standard stuff and say it works, but without practical testing over a few months in an actual greenhouse envirnoment, you never know what bugs will develop.

Have seen it happen a few times where such diyers order expensive circuit boards only to find it fails because their design was untested and flawed, and they blame everything else as being faulty until someone shows them that it was their own error.