Space Buckets, a Community of DIY LED Gardeners | Hacker News Reader

Space Buckets, a Community of DIY LED Gardeners

spacebuckets.com

85 pointsekrof31 comments

Why the buckets? I grow tomatos, spices and onions in doors with just a regular indoor pot and a natural light source AKA a window.

Giving plants light for longer duration does increase their growth (tho normal LED's and house lamps aren't optimal for this, there are specialized growlights that produce wavelengths that are more desirable for plants Chlorophyll absorbs blue light the most which isn't emitted from most lights that are used for indoor lighting which emit yellow, red, and infra-red light the most), but for most growths a window will work just fine, even during the winter time unless you are really upnorth.

So what's the deal with these? seems that if you would take those buckets and use them as normal pots you will get pretty much the same thing with the advantage of it being pretty and greening up the place to boot.

Searching YouTube it seems most of these are used for growing cannabis - not something you would normally put in your window (depending on local laws / neighbors).

Well that explains "All plants are inside our law. We do not judge species based on their political situation. We are a melting pot of photosynthesis enthusiasts." ;)

Yup. The site linked to even has a separate page called 'smell', with all kinds of filter mechanisms. Definitely not to remove the smell of your strawberry plants :p

Beyond that, the economics of vegetables and such prevent lighting like this from being profitable. Consider that most people leave their grow lights on for around 16 hours per day on a 100W setup that produces about 25 tomatoes a month for example, which puts you at about 2.5kg which costs locally here about $5. Now just the lights alone for 16 hours a day for a month would be more than $7 on a 15c per kwh price.

The economics aren't bad, you can make it cost about the same as in the store, a little less or a little more, the economics just aren't great and given there's a whole bunch of time and effort, you'd only do this for fun, not to save money. The exception is when growing a crop that isn't $2 per kg but $10 per gram which is pot, so it's no surprise that 9/10 guys probably use this to grow weed. Besides there are much more fun systems around that can look awesome in your house if you just want to grow some veggies mostly on the power of the sun and merely supplemented by grow lights (for a few hours, in certain stages, or in winter), all kinds of hydroponics stuff that's a lot of fun as a DIY project to automate fully without hiding it all in a bucket. There was a tiny hype some time ago (windowfarming n all), but most of the urban farming is still soil based I find.

I don't think anyone grows stuff out of economics if you live in a city the cost of the soil, pots, seeds, and plant food alone make it highly uneconomical.

There's just something satisfying about being able to grow something even if it's unsustainable, I grow tomatoes and I probably buy more 50 times more tomatoes per month (usually buy a small box of vine/cherry tomatoes for nibbling every 1-2 days so that's about 8-10 pounds a week).

It's a hobby not homesteading, it's just a small ritual of having to move your plants to the window each morning from the more warmer spot they've spent the night in spraying some water on them while drinking your coffee and put some fresh herbs and spring onions on your omelette for breakfast.

It's not economical it's just relaxing and enjoyable.

> Chlorophyll absorbs blue light the most which isn't emitted from most lights that are used for indoor lighting which emit yellow, red, and infra-red light the most

Nope, LEDs emmit mostly blue. And the bluest ones are the cheapest.

But yes, one'd need a lot of LEDs to get the luminance of the day.

Plants need other frequencies to signal different chemical processes, they don't thrive if just fed blue light.

chlorophyll absorption is well documented

https://www.google.com/search?q=photosynthesis+absorption&sa...

There is a lot more to it than just chlorophyll absorption. I've been looking into this lately with regard to saltwater aquarium lighting, and it's pretty complicated stuff. Google "McCree curve" and "Photosynthetically active radiation" for (much) more.

You should check out the resources at http://www.reddit.com/r/HandsOnComplexity, there is a lot of great knowledge about plant lighting there!

As other people say, you are only looking at part of the picture. Plants need different wavelengths and these change through the plant's lifecycle.

LEDs are not optimal but plenty of people have reasonable success with them.

Personally I have a 250w metal halide. My electricity is $0.12 per kW/h so 10 hours per day costs me $0.40.

I grew with fluorescent before that and I would use that again.

I don't grow cannabis - chillis and basil at the moment but come spring I use it to sprout seedlings for the University allotment.

gives you complete control of the grow variables: temperature, atmosphere, water and light containment

also allows for stackable modular design meeting different grow needs and encourages experimentation

though i think these sorts of builds are more for scientific grows stead house greening i can say my window tomatoes died because they only got direct sunlight for about an hour a day

Kudos for having an electrical safety page. But is not complete. Some of these installations appear to be both fire and shock hazards. 1. even for flame-rated PC and ABS, the RTI is typically under 50C, so any long-term exposure to LED heat is a fire hazard. 2. unless the power supply is Class II construction, the indicated wiring does not provide a reliable ground bond. GFI will not always help, as it depends on which version of the NEC for the building wiring. Best to choose a p/s certified IAW UL8750 (will bear the mark of an NRTL and a reference number) that is rated for Class II ops (will have the double insulation logo). If Class I construction required, never use wire nuts for ground lead connections - use terminals and double-crimped connectors. 3. The power supply should be rated for end-use; that is, is should not be a 'component power supply'. UL refers to end-use stuff as 'Listed', and components as 'recognized'. There are other terms for other materials and eauipment, and the terms vary depending on the NRTL that issued the certification (CSA, TUVR, MET, UL, etc). 4. wiring 'styles' (UL has a exhaustive database for this stuff) should be rated for the temperatures the insulation is exposed to, and be rated for the voltage and current that would be present during a fault condition. Recommend style 1015 wiring or better. Most residential PVC wiring probably not suitable for all uses described on these pages. 5. EMI - most of the dimmiable units have poor EMC due to both conduction and radiated emissions. And the demonstrated wiring will probably exacerbate these emissions. Some power supplies that are rated as 'components' depend on the end-use installation to meet radiated limits (47CFR15 subpart B).

Although this is clearly a cannabis-growers hobby, I think its pretty good that a lot of innovation is coming from this scene that can be applied to growers of other sustenance-providing plants .. would be good to see this scale with some Moores' Law or so, as the years go by.

Hydroponic growing is done at scale, but usually in greenhouses. Using only electrical light is too inefficient for regular foods, even with LEDs.

https://www.google.de/maps/place/Almer%C3%ADa,+Spain/@36.753...

Growth efficiency is one thing .. integrating micro controllers that pamper your plants hands-free is another thing entirely! :)

Wow, that Google Earth link is pretty interesting, thank you for that.

I was curious & had to look this place up: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Almer%C3%ADa

There isn't a ton on the Wikipedia entry about their agriculture, though this is the main excerpt:

"...spectacular economic growth due to tourism and intensive agriculture, with crops grown year-round in massive invernaderos"

How cost effective is this space-bucketry? Right now tomatoes are $3.99/lb at WholeFoods. If I grew my own tomatoes, and my yield was, say, 5lbs, would the cost of growing them (electricity, nutrients, etc.) come out to be less than $20?

Most people are growing something which is a little more expensive per pound than $20

Holy crap almost $9 per kg, that's expensive!

Anyway it wouldn't be very cost effective but you can certainly save some money. Thing is, one tomato is about 200g total, if you eat that say 5 days a week, you're looking at about $0.50 a day. Even if you can cut that price in half by growing it yourself, you're saving $7.50 a month, and you'll surely easily spend more than 2 hours a month on setting things up, germinating seeds, harvesting etc. At say a quite modest (for HN) $30 salary per hour, you're throwing out the window 8x your savings in opportunity cost. So you'd only really do this if you enjoy it, or if you grow pot.

(for pot, you probably get 150g off of a single plant, and prices of $10 a gram are pretty typical. If you grow a plant every few months, it's probably worth your time in a world where it's legal, although in that world, prices come down pretty fast, too).

In short, growing pretty much anything at home can save you money if you value your opportunity cost at 0 (i.e. do it purely for fun). If you actually account for your opportunity cost, it's pretty terrible, industrialised farming is just way more efficient. If you enjoy it and have a garden, it can actually save you a few hundred bucks a year, much more than these buckets can (the economics of paying for artificial sunshine rather than using the sun we have makes no sense, nor does the investment in any of the material when you have soil, even just in pots if you have no garden), but you'll probably spend a few hours in the garden each weekend and so your hourly wage is beyond crap, you really just have to do it for fun and see the cost savings as a nice surprise. The buckets aren't cost effective, they're purely for weed, or for fun DIY projects, not for saving money. (they can save some money, again, if you don't put a value on your time, but not as well as simply using pots or a garden.)

For a quick idea about the cost. Big thing obviously is lighting. A lot of guys use 100W setups for 16-18 hours a day, at a 15c per kwh rate you're paying about $7.50 in electricity alone per month. So if you use that setup to grow enough so you can eat 1 tomato every single weekday from your bucket, all else being free, you're still saving just $17.50 or so in the shop, and spending $7.50 on lights. So your net benefit is $10 a month. Now imagine your neighbour offered you a job to build him a bucket (for free, with your own money), and pay you $10 a month to tend the tomato plant in his bucket, you'd say hell no, but those are really the economics (ignoring the fact you may think it's fun and do it even if it saves you no money at all). At a slightly bigger scale it can make sense but again, you'd really rather just have a small garden, plant multiple crops, not setup any electrical work or anything and pay no extra electricity. And at a huge scale it makes no sense whatsoever, i.e. if you do this to sell to other people, your production costs are waaaaay higher than a normal farm.

Great idea! Reminds me a bit of the sous-vide following.

I've never disabled javascript on a site before, but the browsing experience is greatly improved for doing so.

Wow, that's just sad - after disabling javascript everything still works, just faster and without annoying animations / cut-screens.

I'm working on that :) The site is a constant work in progress, like a bucket.

Without Javascript you disable AJAX, basically. Its a good thing that it still works, but it needs to be faster overall.

Like I said, it's really interesting to see all this stuff.

I'll be honest, the AJAX doesn't add anything for me. My ideal webpage has zero movement except scrolling. Things which I would suggest you changed, if you aksed me:

- loading images as you scroll. Let the browser do that. I'm probably going to look at all of them so I'd rather they load before I look rather than waiting for them.

- simulating a loading bar when my browser already has that

- breaking standard keyboard shortcuts (space and shift-space don't work)

- having headings that should be static move around on page load (that's a CSS thing)

- fading in and out on transitions

Thanks for the honest feedback! I appreciate it a lot.

I'm commited to AJAX for the site, I think it can work great after many iterations and tunings. The site has over 50% of mobile traffic and tries to feel like a webapp on those devices. It has been very interesting to see that percentage grow.

Animations in CSS are pretty hard to get right, I see what you mean. I'm not a fan of the fade either. I didn't know about the shortcuts, I'll definitely look into that.

Cheers from Argentina!

On mobile the visuals are quite nice. :)

Well, most of this isn't super accessible to beginners. I have no idea what 90% of that means:

This is my Space Bucket! I use 5M of 5050SMD LEDs and 4 CFL bulbs in a 4 way adapter. I use a combination of topping and hardcore LST to shape the plant and then specific defoliation to develop the canopy. Anything below the lighting spacer is removed as well as anything blocking light to budsites. When the plant reaches 40% of the planned height it gets flipped to flower.

http://www.spacebuckets.com/u/bacon_flavored

Seems like a fun project, though. I wish that particular example included total cost.

This is a problem with hydroponics as a whole.

As soon as you get out of the set-and-forget solutions like the Aerogarden, there's very little in the way of introductory material out there. It's dive-in-and-Google-all-the-TLAs time.

No bucket required. I purchased some LED grow lights from Amazon which were super cheap and work great. They produce very little heat, are unobtrusive and supplement my indoor plants for the winter.

Why I wonder is it better than a normal pot setup?

I guess, perhaps just because it's cool is reason enough.

Are people breeding dwarf varieties?

control

control temperature, atmosphere, light containment

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