[Bubonik Chronic]

@TheGreenMachine sounds like your having a right mare pal.Iv been uming and aring about controllers,and after reading this im just going to buy a single variac controller for 60quid and run either my 4in as an inlet on full power or maybee just a passive inlet.I like the idea of building a twin variac fornotmuch more but my electronics skills end at putting systems in cars lol.

Edited by Bubonik Chronic, 21 January 2017 - 10:21 AM.

[Viz]

I have not used any of the controllers you guys have, picked up a new Evolution Controller on ebay for £125 last December and have not regretted it one bit. Manages my fans, my heater and regulates both them and RH.  Win win for me.

[TheGreenMachine]

@TheGreenMachine sounds like your having a right mare pal.Iv been uming and aring about controllers,and after reading this im just going to buy a single variac controller for 60quid and run either my 4in as an inlet on full power or maybee just a passive inlet.I like the idea of building a twin variac fornotmuch more but my electronics skills end at putting systems in cars lol.

 

Yeah man - there's always something going wrong just lately.

I've seen some variac autotransformer controllers for sale on Ebay for around the £55 - £80 mark (Ebay Item no: 281595063037 and Ebay item no: 170283484665) but they literally only seem to come with one speed control selector knob on the front with aprox 5 speed settings to chose from. They don't look bad except they don't seem to offer any flexibility and it all seems to be manual control i.e. set your speed and that's it.

 

I need something that runs the fans on a minimum tick-over setting at lights off and then ramps the fan up to speed according to temperature of the room e.g. at lights on.

 

I've just been writing out my shopping list for the home built variac controller using the ATC-800. I reckon by the time I keep replacing fans and controllers I could have built a couple of variac controllers by now for the money I've spent.

 

I just need something to get me by for now until I can get the thing built, tested and installed. Whether SMSCom send me a replacement out of good will or I fix my old controller, I've got to do something. When I go in my room now all I can smell is warm rotting compost type smell from where the fan has kept failing and no air is being swapped at lights out and probably lights on too so they're cooking. And in the day the heater comes on and the plant justs sit in 70F warm damp humid (80%) air with just an oscillating fan going. God knows what damage is being done or how much time and or buds this is going to cost me.

 

Last grow I screwed up the light timings, the time before that I had rot, the time before that rot again, the time before that room controller failure, the time before that something else and something else. My first year growing was the best. It all seems to have gone downhill from there. Always fucking something screwing up. I should be getting better as time goes on, not fucking worse LOL

 

Is it too much to ask the gods for one grow that goes well from beginning to end? LOL

 

 

Up to now I think I've priced up everything I need to buy for the variac controller. Some bits (plugs, cable, connectors etc) I've already got so I'm looking at aprox £102 for all the bits I do need.

When you consider I've had two SMS controllers and I've just been and purchased a new fan I could have built the variac controller already and I'd probably still be running my original Ruck RK150 fan I've just replaced.

 

 

What I'm going to have to do (as much as a ball-ache as it is) is to put the fan on mains at night during lights ON then be up at 06:30 to put the fan on the SMSTwin controller just to run it at tickover at lights out. I risk damaging my new fan by plugging it in to broken shit but I can't do much more else. I suppose I could put the fan on a timer to come on continuously at lights on then every half hour at lights out or something but I don't know how well a timer or the fan would stand up to that. Or if my timer can do that many programs per day. Fans, motors and windings etc are not my most knowledgeable subjects I have to admit.

 

Not having any decent weed isn't helping my mood either. Ran out about 10 days ago so I'm having to pay for it which goes against the grain. I'm having to ration myself so I'm on 80% tobacco style joints just so I don't have to keep buying it. Horrible when you're about two weeks away from a crop and things go wrong on top. Oh well, guess I'm going to have to sacrifice a chicken to the gods or something. Obviously I've offended them in some way hahahaha.

Edited by TheGreenMachine, 21 January 2017 - 10:59 AM.

[Roy Cropper]

sms com are shite m8, in a nutshell, they just big fancy dimmer switches ! say its £150 to build a step transformer, the sms hybrid is £200 to buy, or there abouts, will eliminate the humming off the fan too, 

 

just putting it out there, i know we all do but rvk, ruck and so on are not built to be fan speed controlled ! they just made to be fully on or fully off ! 

 

i have used a gse temperature and humidity controller before, probably better than the old sms com but still £100 

 

 

[Viz]

@TheGreenMachine  Everything that you said you want to do and are thinking of building up the unit to do it, the Evolution does.

 

 

http://www.ecotechni...d_contoller.htm

 

The Evolution Digital Fan Speed Controller monitors temperature and humidity within the grow room and constantly adjusts the speed of the extraction/intake fans to maintain optimal conditions for plant growth. The unit also controls a grow room heater and is compatible with the Ecotechnics Evolution CO2 controller.This controller can control multiple fans through each channel up to a combined load of 6A (per channel) . The heater output will control loads up to 3kW making it compatible with most fan heaters and all solenoid controlled gas heaters.The Evolution is a more expensive unit than some other options but has superior features and technology so the extra outlay is easily justified for those wishing to have maximum control over their environmental variables. This unit is supplied with a comprehensive printed User Guide plus the expanded PDF user guide 

[TheGreenMachine]

sms com are shite m8, in a nutshell, they just big fancy dimmer switches ! say its £150 to build a step transformer, the sms hybrid is £200 to buy, or there abouts, will eliminate the humming off the fan too, 

 

just putting it out there, i know we all do but rvk, ruck and so on are not built to be fan speed controlled ! they just made to be fully on or fully off ! 

 

i have used a gse temperature and humidity controller before, probably better than the old sms com but still £100 

 

Yet in the blurb they say they can be speed controlled - but when you look in depth on some of these sites it does say using a 5 speed auto-transformer. Most likely just sales blurb. I can't argue as I'm no expert in this field.

Motors are not my thing. I only know basic stuff about them. Speed controlling AC not being one of them. I mainly play around with DC circuits and micro-controllers etc.

 

I do agree that SMS controllers are crap though. Like you say, glorified dimmers which leads to burnt out equipment. I've designed better with an Arduino controlling it all and I'm no expert in electronics. The board in this SMS single looks right cheap and nasty shit. It's like they've designed the cheapest most basic dimming circuit they could get away with. There's maybe 20 components on the entire board. I'm not saying it should be an all singing all dancing high tech board packed with surface mount technology but this sms board doesn't look much better than a prototype board you send away to get produced in small numbers lol.

 

Variac is definitely the way to go according to the advice given here and my research. I should have done it a long time ago like when my first SMS died but I thought 4 years was pretty reasonable and expected to get the same from my replacement SMS Single. I was wrong. lol. Of all the times it had to happen it picks now - 3/4 of the way into a grow and when all my lab / electronics equipment is packed away in the attic and I can't get to anything to do any real tests or repairs. Typical lol. Thankfully I've got a good mate who shares the same interests as me so I'm hopefully going to make use of his workshop and tools to build my variac controller and repair my SMS Controllers. I would chuck the SMS controllers but given what has happened I would like lots of backups around even if they are cheap and only temporary to get me by when stuff goes wrong.

 

It's funny because another of my friends has just stopped growing and has packed / sold / chucked a load of equipment and he offered me more or less first dibs about a month back. I didn't have much off him as I already had pretty much what I needed - or so I thought. I did have a couple of radiators, a ballast, a hood and a couple of other bits off him. Well LUCKY for me I've just rang him to ask him if he still has his old environment controller and he DID. So I've had it off him for £20. I'm picking it up tomorrow all being well. It's not a fancy controller, just a cheapy like the SMS ones BUT it works and it will hopefully get me through until I can get my variac controller built. I was going to just borrow it but thought I may as well buy it then I've got another backup kicking around. My grow is going to be backup city soon. I reckon the way it's going I'll have enough to fit out 3 or 4 grow rooms - not that I'm going to though lol.

 

Thank GOD for mates!

[TheGreenMachine]

@TheGreenMachine  Everything that you said you want to do and are thinking of building up the unit to do it, the Evolution does.

 

 

http://www.ecotechni...d_contoller.htm

 

Thanks mate. I appreciate the suggestion but I've been put off all these "digital type" controllers. They all seem to be based around this triac dimmer idea like my SMScom and they're just not man enough.
The evolution looks better built but I bet essentially at the heart of it will be some sort of triac.

 

I've had two such triac based controllers burn out / pack up on me and it's put me right off. The evolution is probably 100 times better than the SMScom which is cheap and cheerful, I'm not knocking the Evolution but after reading quite a bit about all this I'm going to go with the manual mechanical variac type instead. They are better suited for the job. The way the mechanical variacs handle speed regulation is better for the fan motor and they are less likely to die than some £1 three legged triac chip. Once bitten and all that - or twice bitten in my case LOL

 

I'm glad your evolution is working out for you and I hope it continues to do so mate. It's a PITA when any controller goes wrong.

 

Another issue with these digital controllers with them being purely electronic is they are open to electromagnetic interference. Low voltage and High voltage with motors / inductive loads involved equals lots of problems if things aren't shielded or protected properly. Certainly looking at the circuit board of my SMScontroller it looks cheap as fuck and probably has little shielding / screening against such things apart from some sort of basic snubber protection circuit stopping EM shit coming back to the controller from the motor.

 

Which is interesting because a while back I had a tri-meter that I used when I was growing in aquafarms. When anything like a pump or fan or my lights were running it would screw up the Tri-Meter and the readings would go all wanky. The meter would reset randomly, all the readings were wrong. You couldn't use it when the lights were on at all. I tried using ferrites on all the cables and leads and that helped a little but eventually one EM spike too many killed it completely or rather killed its power supply. With that in mind I now wonder what damage was being done to the micro-controller or other components in my SMS controller? It could quite easily have been the same thing that affected my Tri-meter that's killed my controller over time. The trouble with DC circuits and micro-controllers is it doesn't take much to upset them. They essentially work on 0s and 1s and pass data around in waveform (HIGH and LOW at certain frequencies). Supposing something interferes with that waveform? Something that should have been high as gone low and vice versa. The controller doesn't have a clue what to make of it. Then all the EM can damage other parts as well. Over time things start to break down.

 

Cars are the same with their on board computers. Your engine management could be telling you one thing when in fact it's another. A bad signal / corrupt data is all it takes.
E.g. car wont start and diagnostics says bad injectors. Further investigation reveals the fuel pump was at fault and it had a bad electrical connection. That bad connection caused false signals, data corruption and allsorts to the point the ECU thought it was some other part at fault. It just takes a ZERO to become a ONE in the data that's being sent around the cars data bus and boom. One fault is detected as another. DC "smart" circuits need plenty of protection especially when working around areas with high EM (motors / RF etc) and when integrating with mains. The tiniest bit of interference could cause massive problems.

 

 

When I build my Variac controller I'm still going to put in as much circuit protection as I possibly can to shield the digital ATC-800 controller from RF / EM interference. While it may already have it on the ATC-800 I'm going to go overboard with it.

[TheGreenMachine]

@TheGreenMachineim just going to buy a single variac controller for 60quid and run either my 4in as an inlet on full power or maybee just a passive inlet.I like the idea of building a twin variac fornotmuch more but my electronics skills end at putting systems in cars lol.

 

They're not hard to do if you follow the guide buddy. There's a couple of sites that have decent guides for building what is essentially the same variac controller - give or take a few variations to the design. They explain all the wiring and everything you'll need and what you need to do. All I'm going to do is follow the guide essentially.

 

A home built variac controller works out at about £100 - £150 depending on which version you build (twin or single variac).

 

I've looked at the pre-built ones but as I say, they only seem to offer speed control only and not temperature. I guess they could be modified to run some sort of temperature controller as well but I'd hate to buy one and find out they can't be modified. Though if I was going to modify one, for the price I could just as easy go and buy a waterproof IP box and a mechanical variac and build it to my liking based on the guides.

 

If you're not desperate you could build it bit by bit over the long term?
 

[olmec]

I've had a SMS controller for a few years now, the speed controller part is still going well but the temp prob part is wank now it used to be good but have to say it's fucked now lol, I don't get any buzzing or Hun tho!

From all the crap on forums I've read over the years the eco techs are bulletproof an really stand up! I always thought I'd get one someday.

You can do some pretty kick ass stuff with a raspberry pi, temps timers cameras the worlds your oyster

[Dex]

Sorry to hear again mate I swear by cheap stuff lol