We all love Hydroponics for its ease and capability of being more scalable than conventional gardening. The possibility of using less water and still yielding better results is very attractive.
How traditional hydroponics work
However Hydroponics is not a self-starter, it comes with the need to monitor pH and TDS values, taking care of the nutrient solution and potentially working with pumps of some sort.
as we know pH & TDS is vital to your system. And in order for your system to grow and yield crops, you need to measure and monitor that vital metric. Usually, a hydrogardener would fill reservoir with nutrient solution if it’s empty. Afterwards he/she would measure and set the correct TDS value and also the pH value. Every time the reservoir is empty, these steps must be repeated. Of course some very ambition hydrogardeners measure their system more frequently but some only measure pH and TSD right after filling and only for new fillings. But there a multiple circumstances affecting the pH and TDS and if you only measure once in a while, you will never now if your pH is right after you measured it. Only because you measured it right after does not mean the value stays where you put it. Also if you have a lot of nutrient solution it takes a while until the solution is mixed because you might only measure a tiny part of the whole system.
The result of this procedure is non-optimal growing plants. The plants might lack nutrients because of a slightly off pH value, or some sort of damage is developing because the TDS level is too low.
Moreover, not only pH and TDS is vital it’s other core metrics as well, there is ORP, water temperature, and simply the water level. Which you might want to track to optimize your growth and minimize plant damage.
Apart from measuring there might also be another task which must be done repeatedly, like switching on/off an air pump or a water pump to deliver nutrients to your plants.
All in all, hydroponics offer the unique possibility of automating crops and plants but most hydrogardeners do it still manually and sacrifice plant growth for it.
All in all, there are multiple downsides of monitoring hydroponics manually:
- In a big system, with a lot of water flowing around, measurements can only get a snapshot of information but not a holistic view onto the system itself
- Only done several times, but not in real time
- There are a lot of different metrics to track
The Solution
In the past, we created the Solutionexplorer to give you the right pH and TDS values for your specific system. In the future we want to give you the tools of tracking those values and take action when it’s needed.
Luckily all theses things can be easily solved, because for all those vital metrics there is a sensor which can help you keep track of those values. We build a system which tracks all those metrics and also activate devices either based on data or on a simple time interval. Moreover you can monitor your hydroponics from your couch, and get alerts when a critical threshold is exceeded.
Our system consists of a device which gathers the data, and a service which gives you access to it. The service does not only include monitoring and tracking data, but also receiving alerts and reacting to those alerts.
The device comes with sensors which monitor your nutrient solution and environment
Sensors in the nutrient solution, help to track all the vital metrics of your hydroponics system
With this data we can create dashboards to track the system and also derive recommendations for you to act in order to optimize your growth and minimize the losses.
A dashboard delivers insights into the current and past state of your hydroponics system
The dashboard can track the pH and TDS values and also monitor the temperature of your solution. It can also show if the water level is too low.
Using this system it is easy to monitor your system and it is also easier to scale your system while still keeping track of all your data.
Keep track of your hydroponics system from anywhere
If you are interested in this new device, join the list and get notified as soon as this is available.
Update June 2021
Since we’ve written this article we put a lot of effort in developing the tool further. The foundation is done, and you can now start for free with the Hydroplanner. You can easily log all your measurements manually and analyse trends. Also very soon you are able to use a HydroGuard to analyse your system completely automated.