New user ideas and feedback

Ideas & Feature Requests
#1

New user, here are a couple of ideas (constructive criticism ;):

  1. Dash: beside the live data, I would like to see the “target” for the current recipe. For example, RH is 52% right now, but the recipe target is 48%. Same for temp and VPD. It is a PITA to go back to look it up in the recipe everytime. This could be added to the stats visualisation, so the recorded curve can be assessed against it.
  2. Stats: toggle viewing parameters. Different units have the different value range. I can’t visually assess VPD swinging from 0.8 to 1.4 if the graphic is scaled from 0 to 100 on the Y axis.
  3. Threshold tolerance for climate control. I don’t like the exhaust fan to shut off the minute it hits temperature target, with the intensity of lights, it swings back up rapidly, and overshoots by the time the fan turns back on. Is the system “learning” from how the environment reacts and adjusting its PID accordingly? I’d like to be able to input, for example, temp 1 degree under, 2 degrees over, or more or less 4% humidity, etc.
  4. Have the option to choose the light cycle to “lead” other cycles and associate climate targets according to night and day. A custom outlet could be triggered 15 minutes every hour during the day, 5 minutes every 2 hours during the night. And not have to change those timeframes when changing the light cycle for the recipe, everything else would follow suite accordingly.
  5. Night/day VPD leaf offset. The leaf temp offset is different if the lights are on or off.
  6. Logging of outlet events, to allow review of what happened beyond the measurements.
#2

Hey growqc,

Thanks for being so helpful with your feedback, it is very valuable, and we are listening, I’m not sure if we will be able to implement all of them, but let me give some isnsight:

  1. Great (and new) idea, it’s doable.
  2. Good idea as well, doable.
  3. Having a custom option is a little complex but, there is a “dead zone” to protect your climate control equipment, let me explain with an example: If you have a humidifier set on your outlets, and you set a humidity of 60% as a target, your humidifier will turn ON at 55% and below RH; and it will turn OFF at 60% and above, this will prevent your humidifier to turn ON and OFF constantly when the current humidity is close to the humidity target.
  4. I see it complex from the user experience point of view, having too many ways to create a recipe can be overwhelming for some less experienced users.
  5. Similar to 4 and even having it, we need to assume VPD won’t be perfect unless you are constantly reading the leaf temperature with a specific probe.
  6. Yes! This is in our pipeline.

Again, we really appreciate this feedback. Could you please email me to javier@getniwa.com ? I’d like to keep in touch.

Javier-Foudner
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#3

Thank you Javier for taking the time to consider these ideas. I have been running the hub for a couple of days now and I am loving it! The environment is way more dialed in to where I want it to be :smiley:

I appreciate your point of view of the user perspective. Maybe it’s one of those things that can be explained in the documentation how the logic works. I’m starting to get a better sense for it and it works great.

Keep up the good work, excited to see where this goes!

#4

You are welcome growqc!

We have a section on our manual where we explain how the recipe works, do you think we need to improve it? Maybe not clear enough? (Page 23. How a recipe is executed)

Here you can find our updated online manual.

Thanks in advance for your comments!
Javier
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#5

It is necessary to read the example to actually understand what is going on. For the RH “dead zone”, it is not plus or minus 5% tolerance, but target RH to 5% below. From what I gather for temperature, it is the opposite where the target temp is a floor value, not plus or minus 0.5 degrees. Maybe this could be clarified with an example for temperature?

#6

Yes, sure growqc, with temperature, for example if you have a goal of 31ºC (the device works in ºC internally) this would be the behavior

31.5ºC - Fan On
< 31ºC - Fan Off
< 30.5ºC - Heater On
31.5ºC - Heater Off

I hope it helps!

#7

Are there any plans to add Leaf VPD? From what I can tell the leaf temp offset only changes the VPD displayed value but doesn’t adjust your recipe to set the VPD to your desired Leaf VPD. This make it so I have to set a VPD of 1.7 to get a leaf VPD of 1.0 if my temps are 84 with a leaf offset of -6. How about having a Leaf VPD that takes into account the leaf temp offset and sets your humidity or temp to the appropriate level?

#8

Hello Ksmith35709,

I’m not sure if I understood you, but if you change the VPD offset, you can update the auto calcultaed Temp and Rh values on your recipe, to do so just edit your recipe VPD goal and the new temp and RH will be updated.

I hope it helps!

#9

Hello Javier,
I went back to check what was going on and you are correct it does do the calculation. What I noticed is this: When I created a recipe I selected T&VPD for my climate control. When I save the recipes if I go back in it changes back to T&RH. This makes it so when I adjust my VPD Leaf Temperature Offset it changes the VPD instead of the RH. So it does work but if I need to change my VPD Leaf Temperature Offset I need to stop my recipe, adjust my VPD then start my recipe again. Can this be fixed? Thank you for your support!

KS

#10

You are right Ksmith35709, that is the case, this is in our list, and we will try to improve it in future releases.

Thanks for your help and feedback!

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#11

I would like to agree with GrowPc’s suggestion #2. VPD is scaled down so far that you cant really visualize any trends or levels.

Rickster

1 Like
#12

Noted! Thanks for your feedback, Rickster!

#13

Allow outlets to be user defined.

1 Like
#14

Hey Tentup, what do you mean?

#15

Yes we know don’t run the NIWA in the grow but life’s complicated and often times we have to do what we have to do
That said; the LEDs on the NIWA really need two major improvements:

  1. Change these LED to green. Blue and red are super bad in our grows during the dark period, full stop. Please change these asap. I honestly can’t believe it’s not a topic and not an emergency patch
  2. Please make it so when the light the NIWA is controlling goes OFF, so do the LEDs. At a minimum give us this as an option to enable/disable.

As noted, life isn’t perfect and some of us have to run the NIWA in the grow (for many reasons). Any light during the dark period is a recipe (no pun intended) for disaster (intersex plants).

Please guys, imo important changes.

I’ve had to McGiver a shroud around the NIWA to protect my garden from the light leaking out of the NIWA unit. Covering the LEDs with tape doesn’t fix it…