Pay it forward (Wanted/Offering)

[Pipecarver]

Seems perfectly reasonable to me and definitely cheaper than 2 pens. I am seriously overly OCD about most things in general but as long as you have a second reference to check a pen with if something seems off and/or the pen is acting up that’s all that is needed. IMO

I've been at it a long time too, I checked every input and run off ph and ppm and kept track of it....after a while I started to understand how my nutes effected my water and soil....so now I have a feeling where things are at......

I should check more often but my guesses to where I'm at are pretty close when I do check........My ppm did get too high this grow and it cost me 1 plant.when I got up over 1400 I was thinking 1200 when I took the reading....ooops.....lol.....I dropped my feed a bit and alls good....

 

[Observer]

I use 2 Apera’s my original one is their cheaper model but still calibrates fine. Cost was about $60. Biggest negative about it is the pH probe can’t be replaced!

Then I bought their Gro Star $150 model on a splurge by at the Hydro store. It also does EC but biggest positive IMO is the pH probe is replaceable for about $35.

IMO a serious grower should have 2 in order to double check if something seems off. As stated above you have to rinse any pH pen AFTER EVERY USE and IMO more importantly keep the cap on so it never dries out.

I honestly wish I had spent a little more and got a Blue Lab pen however my original Apera is over three years old and my new one is over a year old and both work and calibrate. So nothing negative to say about Apera and so far their products have lasted and worked great.

Lastly and also my opinion as well as the way I was taught. pH pens are only worth a damn if calibrated at least every 2 weeks and I try to do it once a week. You should know about what the pH is in your typical nutrient solution. If the pH pen reads 9.1 instead of the typical 7.2 it normally is there generally is a problem with the pen and it at minimum needs to be calibrated as well as double checked with a back up pen.

Just my 2 cents.

Peace out,

LJ

Good to hear

Looking at the the Apera kit 50$ or so

Not sure about a decent E.C meter yet That doesn't break the bank

 

[Observer]

But I got some more Phenol red for now so I can Atleast see around the range this places tap water is.

Should be same city water but the pipes are a variable too I figure.

 

[Pipecarver]

Good to hear

Looking at the the Apera kit 50$ or so

Not sure about a decent E.C meter yet That doesn't break the bank

what about taste test Ob? you seem like the kinda guy that may get useful info from a small drop like a wine connoisseur...eventually you'd be able to tell ppm and ph with just a drop on your tongue ..lol...start now by the time you're my age you'd be a taste testing wonder.......its just salts....lol

 

[Doobie]

Sup man.

I'm probably gonna buy the Apera 50$ kit and some strips

The Spx610 comes with a kit and case also. It has extra batteries and storage and calibration solution. The only problem with the one your talking about is you cannot replace the probe. But other than that I hear it's a solid pen. It should last you awhile.

 

[Doobie]

https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&source=web&rct=j&opi=89978449&url=https://www.amazon.com/s%3Fi%3Dmerchant-items%26me%3DA3F5JSVG6V4NH8&ved=2ahUKEwi26eX6j4-BAxUXj4kEHTHCBk4QFnoECDQQAQ&usg=AOvVaw2OxzgeTyYEplFbefytoT3a

The green meter on the left is cheap and reliable. I paid 9$ and after I calibrated it reads almost as accurate as my Apera. It's only.1 off. So if my Apera reads 5.8 the yinmik reads 5.7. Not bad for 9$.

 

[Rootsruler]

I like to calibrate before each grow. Bluelab wants you recalibrating every few weeks but I know, with the recipe I've been using, where pH should end up. I like the confirmation just to be sure. As was stated, soil, the medium I use, means pH doesn't need to be as accurate as the soil will buffer. I guess old habits die hard but working at LGO's they require you to list your readings every feed so it's more routine for me. If my pen drifts then soils got my back and if the reading is way off I know it's time to recalibrate. So far I've never had to recalibrate a bluelab pen because it went wacky. I always rinse my meters after use and make sure my pH pen has buffer in the cap to keep the sensor hydrated.

 

[smoke]

Good to hear

Looking at the the Apera kit 50$ or so

Not sure about a decent E.C meter yet That doesn't break the bank

Everything just calibrated

 

[Doobie]

I like to calibrate before each grow. Bluelab wants you recalibrating every few weeks but I know, with the recipe I've been using, where pH should end up. I like the confirmation just to be sure. As was stated, soil, the medium I use, means pH doesn't need to be as accurate as the soil will buffer. I guess old habits die hard but working at LGO's they require you to list your readings every feed so it's more routine for me. If my pen drifts then soils got my back and if the reading is way off I know it's time to recalibrate. So far I've never had to recalibrate a bluelab pen because it went wacky. I always rinse my meters after use and make sure my pH pen has buffer in the cap to keep the sensor hydrated.

I also rinse off my meters before putting the cap on with storage solution in the cap.

 

[Doobie]

https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&source=web&rct=j&opi=89978449&url=https://www.amazon.com/s%3Fi%3Dmerchant-items%26me%3DA3F5JSVG6V4NH8&ved=2ahUKEwi26eX6j4-BAxUXj4kEHTHCBk4QFnoECDQQAQ&usg=AOvVaw2OxzgeTyYEplFbefytoT3a

The green meter on the left is cheap and reliable. I paid 9$ and after I calibrated it reads almost as accurate as my Apera. It's only.1 off. So if my Apera reads 5.8 the yinmik reads 5.7. Not bad for 9$.

So that link didn't work as intended. The pen I am talking about is the Blue one for 11.99. Second one down from the top.

 

[Observer]

what about taste test Ob? you seem like the kinda guy that may get useful info from a small drop like a wine connoisseur...eventually you'd be able to tell ppm and ph with just a drop on your tongue ..lol...start now by the time you're my age you'd be a taste testing wonder.......its just salts....lol

I actually.....considered this idea a few nights ago, haha.

I got some Phenol red to match up, maybe I could see if there's a slight taste difference.

 

[Observer]

The Spx610 comes with a kit and case also. It has extra batteries and storage and calibration solution. The only problem with the one your talking about is you cannot replace the probe. But other than that I hear it's a solid pen. It should last you awhile.

Oh shit ok thanks man, yeah I'd probably want a replaceable probe.

I've had multiple of those cheap ass 5-10$ pens blue/orange/yellow never worked the best for me but some of that is more than likely my fault for
improper maintenance/handling & Storage

 

[Observer]

Everything just calibrated
View attachment 19870

I want one of those.


Top ppm bottom pH?

Nice

 

[Observer]

what about taste test Ob? you seem like the kinda guy that may get useful info from a small drop like a wine connoisseur...eventually you'd be able to tell ppm and ph with just a drop on your tongue ..lol...start now by the time you're my age you'd be a taste testing wonder.......its just salts....lol

So that link didn't work as intended. The pen I am talking about is the Blue one for 11.99. Second one down from the top.

Thank you may get a decent ph Apera one and then a cheap pH one and some strips to gerify accuracies

 

[Observer]

I've been at it a long time too, I checked every input and run off ph and ppm and kept track of it....after a while I started to understand how my nutes effected my water and soil....so now I have a feeling where things are at......

I should check more often but my guesses to where I'm at are pretty close when I do check........My ppm did get too high this grow and it cost me 1 plant.when I got up over 1400 I was thinking 1200 when I took the reading....ooops.....lol.....I dropped my feed a bit and alls good....

Yup, I had everything measure out and didn't have to check anymore but now a different brand of nutes and maybe slightly different water.

Throwing my pH off mainly, got some more Phenol red so I can get an idea

Waiting on settlement money from car wreck to get apartment and baby stuff things and then if there's enough left over I can get a nice ish pH pen kit

 

[tobh]

Waiting on settlement money from car wreck to get apartment and baby stuff things and then if there's enough left over I can get a nice ish pH pen kit

damn dude. just went through that myself. seven. fucking. years. of bullshit. settlement was barely enough to get the emergency fund back in healthy order and pay off the last of the medical debt i incurred because of that wreck. good luck, man! hope yours moves faster than mine did.

 

[Observer]

Fu

 

[Observer]

damn dude. just went through that myself. seven. fucking. years. of bullshit. settlement was barely enough to get the emergency fund back in healthy order and pay off the last of the medical debt i incurred because of that wreck. good luck, man! hope yours moves faster than mine did.

Holy hell 7 years fighting insurance?

Seems like a year for us but was around 5 months or so.

It's just been one thing after another, one step forward, two back.

That's life I suppose but it's been way to much back-2-back bs.


We finally got them to come up again some more, not entirely satisfied with the cucks but better than initial offer, needed to take the best we could as moving, financials and time etc.

Should get some checks next week or so.



Thanks man

 

[Observer]

Ok mixed up a gallon, epsom salt and 5-12-26.

No 15-0-0, pH down, hypo acid or h2o2 yet

the color is yellow/orange around 6.0, not a fan of not being precise.

Would like my pH around 5.4-5.8

And fuck this color shade shit lol, women see shades better than men.

 

[SSgrower]

No idea what my pH is, 100% Vermiculite a few coco. Just adding 1ml pH down and wait and see what plants show

Or e.c

This^ I add 1 pipette to 1 1/2 gal of nutrients stir again and "pour" hand watering here still. SSgrower

 

[ninjadip]

Anyone use any "apera instruments"

I buy cheap ph controllers then replace the probe with apera ones and they are close to dead on month after month. So reliable I only recalibrate them now at the end of a grow, and they are only off by a few hundredths.

I have three of these and very satisfied.

Double junction probe:

APERA INSTRUMENTS 201DJ-C Double-Junction pH Electrode, BNC Connector, 3 Ft Cable, PC Body https://a.co/d/6QmxeNH

 

[Observer]

I buy cheap ph controllers then replace the probe with apera ones and they are close to dead on month after month. So reliable I only recalibrate them now at the end of a grow, and they are only off by a few hundredths.

I have three of these and very satisfied.

Double junction probe:

APERA INSTRUMENTS 201DJ-C Double-Junction pH Electrode, BNC Connector, 3 Ft Cable, PC Body https://a.co/d/6QmxeNH

Do those connect to about any controller or

 

[Observer]

@Moe.Red cheaper to make my own controller like you got going on?

I could learn Arduino, I've been meaning to learn programming for years.

 

[tobh]

@Moe.Red cheaper to make my own controller like you got going on?

I could learn Arduino, I've been meaning to learn programming for years.

happy to help you get your feet under ya. was a software engineer for the better part of a decade. don't live in code day-to-day anymore but am now an appsec engineer and always end up finding myself in the depths of low-level malicious code.

 

[Observer]

happy to help you get your feet under ya. was a software engineer for the better part of a decade. don't live in code day-to-day anymore but am now an appsec engineer and always end up finding myself in the depths of low-level malicious code.

Sweet man, I was supposed to do this when I was around 16, 10 years ago.

Quantum mechanics makes more sense to me than a compute language that tells 1s and 0s what to do.

I don't get it lol.

Guess I need a good source to learn and practice and actually sit down and take the time to do it. I get started and it's just like

Like I just want to type in English.

"You'll do this and that"

Figured something like plants and needing microcontrollers etc, will give me the motivation to learn it.

There's a lot of fields that plants correlate/linked to like chemistry, and photosynthesis uses quantum mechanics, and the passion and motivation comes to learn about cultivation and everything it embodies is there.

 

[Observer]

And no shit, plants are damn similar to room temp super conductors

Unless my understanding and how I see things are completely wrong.

They have 95% efficiency at room temp, photons hit electrons and they find their way to the reaction center via quantum entanglement (?)

That's why I say similar.

 

[Observer]

And maybe I can get a WFH job through programming , help support my family while I'm watching daughter and she goes tonwork.

 

[tobh]

Sweet man, I was supposed to do this when I was around 16, 10 years ago.

Quantum mechanics makes more sense to me than a compute language that tells 1s and 0s what to do.

I don't get it lol.

Guess I need a good source to learn and practice and actually sit down and take the time to do it. I get started and it's just like

i'm the same way. reading tutorials and shit don't work for me. it's the attention to detail that's teh killer -- you want to know why but the why doesn't matter in programming. at least, not outside of academic computer science. every "learn to program" book takes that approach, and it doesn't work. breaking down a problem to the what is much more approachable.

for instance. i need this sensor communicate with a central collector that will aggregate teh data and make it consumable to me in a pretty graph. distill it down to i need a client to communicate with a server and send data asynchronously. the server needs to stay alive and receive connections. we'll use UDP protocol as the transport protocol as losing some data isn't going to swing our overall stats heavily.

so let's build a simple udp server and client.

kk that's done, let's move to the server side. the server receives data but doesn't give a shit about it because it has nowhere to dump it. tap postgresql. structured data like this is perfect for a relational database. stand up a database.

now you need an api to make sure teh data lands where it should so the processing can happen. this is a simple API, we're just dumping data from a sensor into a database but we need it organized.

api built. now let's leverage something like grafana to ingest that data and make our pretty graphs. leverage existing technology, you just align the tables and column names with what you want to see and bam. solution to a problem.

filling in the gaps with code and some careful thought becomes much easier when you eliminate the "i have this thing that does 0 and 1 and translating to hello_world() doesn't make sense."

 

[Observer]

I dropped out 10th grade, "teach my self" everything interesting to me

Space
Philosophy
Cultivation
Technology

 

[tobh]

And maybe I can get a WFH job through programming , help support my family while I'm watching daughter and she goes tonwork.

good luck with that. WFH is attainable, but i speak from experience -- watching kids and being a code monkey don't mix. hell, i get into some complex shit and literally the second i get into flow state, i have a child banging on my office door for snacks or help mediating a sibling battle. and my lady won't go to work because kush life.