Old Niwa One and Grow Hub

Troubleshooting & Bugs
#1

Hi folks,

I had to put my Niwa One in storage a couple of years ago and now it’s back home with me. The tablet that had the Niwa Grow Companion app on has died, so I went to the App Store and could only find the “Grow Hub”.

I figured this is the latest/greatest, but I can’t seem to get it to work with the Niwa One. I really can’t find any information on the Niwa One for troubleshooting anywhere.

I loved using the Niwa One and would like to keep doing so and I’m even thinking about trying to take it apart and figure out some way to run it manually (but I will probably wreck it and I certainly don’t want to do that).

Does anyone have any ideas/help?

Rick

1 Like
#2

somehow I think this is a problem that the good folks at NIWA can fix at there end…maybe turn your grow back on somehow…?

#3

Yeah, I’m sure they can help. I just thought maybe there was something obvious I was missing. I’ll reach out to customer service.

#5

Hi,
Were you able to get this resolved? Can you please post the fix - thanks!

#6

I did manage to get my old Niwa going again and with oellie’s prompting, I’m happy to share what I did. It’s going to come in parts, though, because the posts are limited in terms of characters and I want to give a reasonably detailed description of how I went about it.

First, though, I have to say thanks to Javier for the help. As I think everyone on the forum knows, the people behind Niwa are great and always helpful. He helped me out with voltages and such so that I didn’t fry anything while getting the unit going again.

Unfortunately I wasn’t able to re-connect to any kind of legacy growing instructions for the Niwa, but I was able to run it manually with my own cheap timers. (The Grow Hub would have been great, but it also would be like using a supercomputer as a handheld calculator, so I’m reserving that kind of technology for my big outdoor system that runs seasonally.)

I want to doublecheck before going into detail with what outlet is what on the Niwa board rather that post something wrong. I am planning on taking down the current grow (Swiss chard), cleaning (shameless plug below), and then setting up for some peppers, so I will try to remember to double check locations/colors to let everyone know when I can open it up.

Above all, please note that there is electricity involved and if you try any of what I am describing below take all precautions suitable. If you’re not comfortable working with house current, please don’t.

#7

The big thing to know is that the entire unit runs on your typical 110v AC house current with the exception of the circulating fan, which runs on 12v DC. (Again, thanks to Javier for the info). After disassembling the Niwa, you can open it up by removing the screws in the base/feet and go from there.

  1. Identify what output from the board operates what part of the system.

  2. Disconnect those parts from the board (and label them!)

  3. Run a power line into the area that the board is for each part (the light, pump, heater, and fan). This means that you will have three 110V AC cords and one 12v DC.

  4. This was over a year ago, so I don’t remember for sure, but I think that I made sure to keep the right polarity for each part. Probably not a big deal for the heater, but probably important for the pump and the light. And, of course, you want the fan running in the right direction.

  5. I used wire nuts to connect my power lines to the pump, etc. and made sure that I also labeled the power lines.

  6. Once everything was connected and secure, close up the system.

  7. I happened to have two cheap wall timers (the kinds with the dials and little nibs to push in/pull out) and I plugged the light and pump into those. (I did not plug the fan and heater into a timer; the fan should run all the time and I wasn’t planning on cycling the heater.) I plugged everything into a power strip.

#8

The last thing was setting up the timers so that I had light/dark periods and drip periods and it has been running fine since then.

Of course, I also wanted to clean everything thoroughly and to do it I use my own product. One Step Cleanser is primarily sold to homebrewers and winemakers, but we’re starting to sell it under private label to some larger hydroponic outlets. Research was done by a company that sells units similar to the Niwa to ensure that it’s safe for these systems and they found that you can even end up with 40% of the original cleaning solution left behind in your reservoir and it won’t bother the plants (I don’t know what kind of plants they tested it with; it was a few years ago). I’m not going so far as to link to my website, but if you Google it, you should be able to find it. :wink:

Hope this is helpful and, like I said, I’ll try to get some details on wiring in a bit.

Rick

#9

Hi Rick,

Could you please share step-by-step instructions on how you managed to get it working? My Niwa device is still new, and I recently tried operating it, but I found that the app is no longer functional.

Could @Javier_Niwa assist in bringing the app back online or consider making it open source?

#10

Hey @Meshal I DMed you