System Setup

Interested in setting up your very own system at home and you want to build it yourself? Then let us take a closer look and go through all steps.

The following section developed as part of the master thesis and hence not derived from any expert book or research literature. Therefore, it is in development and going to be improved in the future – I would appreciate, if you could give me your feedback here.

Unfortunately, there is no free survey-like implementation available, to guide you through. Hence, the following chapters are divided into small key aspects explained in some detail and walk through bulled points, in order to make this planning process as convenient as possible.

You have answered the questions above? Very well, then let us start with specification details you want to implement for your hydroponic system!

• Your water reservoir should be protected from light in order to prevent algae bloom.
• You want to have a clean design with sleek surfaces and without a lot of corners and edges, to ease the cleaning and to prevent the plants' roots to hold on somewhere you do not want them to.
• If you use a pump, sensors or other electronic devices which have to stay clean, you want to make sure the plants' roots do not hinder their purpose and that deposits rather build up somewhere else.
• If you use a pump to increase the oxygen level, you also want to make sure to distribute it as evenly as possible.
• If possible, avoid a too cold or too hot nutrient solution – the optimal range for plant growth and inhibition of negative side effects are temperatures between 17 - 25 °C.

• You want to distribute the nutrient solution to the plants as even as possible.
• You also want to circulate the whole nutrient solution reservoir throughout your system several times a day.
• You want to use reliable tubing, valves and misters, connectors and reductions, that do not directly clog with the first deposits. In most cases you enable this by taking equipment with at least 1 cm in diameter, better more.
• If using pumps for distribution, you want to rather slightly oversize them than the opposite. It prolongs lifetime and guaranties sufficient flow rates over time. Also pay attention to the reduced flow rates with increasing delivery height, increasing number of misters/valves or increasing tubing diameter.
• If you want to hide your irrigation system as good as possible, make sure you still can clean and even exchange it easily in case of emergency.
• If using an Aeroponic or NFT system, you want to keep your flow rates (at least 50 liter per hour and plant) and timings (at least one irrigation every 15 minutes to prevent roots drying out) as constant as possible.

• Some herbs are grown best on fine-grained, sponge- or foam-like substrates, whereas greens are pretty flexible and whereas fruiting crops require high levels of nutrients and oxygen accompanied with a structure to support them not topple over.
• You want not to overwater your plants, as some substrates are able to soak and secure a huge amount of nutrient solution. On the contrary, you also do not want to let the roots dry out, as they might die within a few hours or even minutes. When touching, the substrate should feel moistures but not wet.
• Not required but simplifying the maintenance: cover your growing area and substrate from light and leaves falling down. This way you reduce living space for pests and diseases and ease the removal of dead organic matter.
• If you grow larger fruiting crops or other bigger plants, make sure to provide an additional support for the shoots to prevent them of toppling over.

• You want to be able to clean your hydroponic system without jeopardizing your plants' health. Hence, you have to include the possibility to pull out each component in order to clean it or the other way around, remove all plants in order to clean the whole system all together.
• If you know your tab water to be very hard water (meaning you normally have to use a lot of descaling agents for washing machine etc.), you may consider to take distilled water instead, because your tab water might interfere with the fertilizer solution causing certain nutrients to not be available for your plants anymore.
• If you use multi-part fertilizers, it is advisable to dilute them separately beforehand (e.g., by diluting 10 ml of fertilizer each in 1 l of tab water/distilled water total, to further on use the 100-fold quantity prescribed). This eases  the initial mixing of the nutrient solution and further adjustments.
• If you have electric or electronic components included, you either need to frequently monitor their state manually or you install some kind of checking and warning system alarming you in case of malfunctioning.
• Not required but very recommended: keep an extra set of each electric and electronic component in reserve in case of emergency. This is especially important for components which are vital for your system to work and without which you cannot keep your plants alive very long.

• If you want to match your very plants' desires regarding light intensity and quality, you will have to search for expert books of this topic. Otherwise you are probably fine making sure your plants receive a light intensity of at least 200 Wh/m²/d, but not more than around 500 Wh/m²/d and a light quality providing a broad spectrum between 350 - 1000 nm.
• Some plants require to pass a certain threshold (upwards or downwards) of lighting hours per day in order to trigger certain metabolic processes including germination, flowering or fruiting. Hence, you should take a look to also provide the right amount of lighting hours to your plants – they range between 8 to 16 hours per day.

• If you are new to programming and micro controllers, you want to look through some project descriptions here in order to find out what you really want and what you dare to implement. As good rule of thumb: it is around as difficult to get your monitoring running as it is to set up the controlling elements or automation, respectively.
• The easier methods include using calibration-free sensors whenever possible and ready to use services which provide a good documentation on how to set it up for the very micro controllers you are planning to use. Check out Blynk and Thingspeak.
• If you want to be flexible regarding maybe extending your systems' monitoring and controlling capabilities, it is definitely wise to pick micro controllers offering a good amount of memory, allowing you to extent your code significantly.
• If you experienced in programming and plan something more advanced, you may want to look into setting up your own program or app – the possibilities are endless.

Link to References