I am interested in making a mushroom fruiting chamber. The aim is to have an open source design that can be used to grow mushrooms. My core idea is as below:
Have an enclosed aluminum box wherein the mushrooms will grow. Have a control Arduino unit that has some kind of Input/Output Device. The I/O device will allow the user to set the desired temperature and humidity within the enclosure. The Arduino should then control a heating element (what is recommended here?) and a humidifier to adjust the temperature and humidity as needed.
To confirm that the temperature and humidity are as desired, the Arduino should be connected to a temperature and humidity sensor (DH22) which measures and displays the temperature and humidity in 30 second intervals.
Additionally, the adruino should connect to a fan that can control the fresh air exchange (C02 sensor) and a lighting source that can adjust the lighting conditions.
My manner of making this happen was:
Get a simple I/O design done with the Arduino. For example, setting a input temperature of 25 degrees Celsius and then having the Arduino display this onto an LCD.
Connect the Arduino to a heating element and attempt to increase and decrease the temperature.
Connect the Arduino to a humidifier and increase and decrease the humidity
Connect the Arduino to a temperature and humidity sensor and display this output to an LCD screen.
I would appreciate being pointed in the appropriate direction if I have made some mistakes!
Welcome, Interesting idea! What size is this going to be. What environment will it be kept in? Have you considered you may also have to have some cooling? What type of power is available. What you are thinking about could be done with a UNO or Nano quite easily. Have fun and let us know how you do.
I was thinking of a 30 cm x 30 cm box. I haven't thought about cooling but I imagine the humidity and air-flow would assist in this regard.
I was thinking of the following "Blocks"
Inputs and Display:
This would allow the user to set the desired humidity, temperature, C02 (Airflow) and Lighting.
Humidity and Temperature Sensor:
The sensors should display the current values of Temperature, Humidity and C02. Then based on the measurements and the desired settings presented via the rotary switch encoder, the Arduino would control the heating element, humidifier and a fan so that the sensed values are the same as the desired values.
in the past I have used rotary encoders selecting from a menu on an LCD in a number of systems, e.g. rotate encoder to move up/down menu and press to select
these days end users usually ask for control from a smartphone, e.g. communicating via BLE to an iOS or Android app
have you decided on the control algorithms to use? e.g.
simple on/off control - remember to add hysteresis otherwise you can get rapid switching on/off of the devices
Dude, I'm building my fruiting chamber now! I initially built a mycelium colonizing chamber out of a small cooler and an attached space heater it. I was lucky in that the space heater had a small 110AC to 12VDC PCB. I used that to power my Arduino Uno. To monitor temp and humidity I used a single DHT.
I have two 5V relays; one controls 12V to the fan while the other controls 110VAC to the heating coil. My initial program had some chattering in the relays because the temp would bounce back and forth between tolerances for a few seconds. It was looping once a second and that just wasn't enough time for the temp to stabilize. To combat this I built a counter variable that would let it cycle through the program for another 2 seconds before switching the relay on. That did the trick. I ended up making a counter for the fan, as well. Since the heating element stays hot for a while after the relay cuts off power, there was a climb of about 5 - 7 degrees. The fan counter was how I combated this. It let the fan continue on for another 15 seconds past when the coil cut off.
Other than that I just popped on a 128x64 OLED to display the tempF and humidity% and "Hunter's Mushroom Lab" at the top!
I put in 5 jars of blue oyster spores + food and was prepared to wait the month for them to colonize and, I'm not exaggerating, TWO WEEKS and some change later I had fully colonized jars! So now I'm scrambling to make a fruiting chamber. Temperature was my only concern with colonization but now we're into humidity, air exchange and lighting controls for fruiting. Let me know what you come up with and I'll keep you posted on my ideas!
Hi, I just wanted to chime in because i own a company that makes mushroom grow kits and I would be interested in partnering with the right person on this project for a mass production unit. Please feel free to message me here or faster by email andrewlangevin@naturelion.ca - Cheers.