Hello cheap homegrown ation. This is Shea McConnell from the cheap homegirl podcast. And on today's show. I have Peter from PL grow systems. Peter comes on the show today to talk about PL grow systems and why he feels is important for home Growers to keep track of their data when growing their own. I know this is a slight change from my typical how to so cannabis podcast, but I figured you would enjoy it before the podcast begins. You can find me on Instagram Twitter Facebook and YouTube all at cheap home grow and also growing with my fellow Growers on Instagram this new Instagram account highlights, my new show called growing with my fellow Growers, which airs every Sunday evening 7:00 p.m. Eastern on YouTube. This podcast is information packed. So please rate review subscribe and enjoy the show. Hello everybody. This is Shane McCormick from the cheap home grow podcast. And on today's show. I have UK entrepreneur Peter from PL grow systems. And today Peter is going to be coming on the show and he and he is going to be talking about his software that can help cannabis Growers grow more efficiently. At home, but before he talks about his software Peter. If you could could you please tell me and my audience a little bit about yourself? Hi-yah, thank you. Thank you name's Peter and my background is actually Financial Market data and Technology oddly enough not necessarily from a Horticultural background at all. Originally. I used to be from South Africa lived in Durban. So it's quite a popular name strain from that location. I must say misspent youth. Yes, enjoyed it quite a lot. All right. Oh, yeah, I don't think there's many people in Durban. We didn't hmm I've and there but but it sounds like fun Durbin and yeah, it's a great place to visit. No, very laid-back is very chilled out Place. Yeah, but then move to the UK 20 20 plus years ago and started along with my business partner Lee. We started piano grow systems. Something we've been kicking about for about on has quite a few years and then formally created as a company January last year. So we've been in business for just over a year. Once we started getting a lot of people wanting the product and we realize what we'd actually put together was turning into a viable business. Why did you guys take so long to formulate a company 20 years is a really long time. Yeah. Well for the previous 20 or 19 years or so, I was working in technology and Financial. Good data, okay working on Big Data Systems and financial Market data contracts and negotiations around that dealing with the whole world of data and all the challenges that that brings with it and really where I mean that was just the background as a hobbyist growing chilies and Cetera in the greenhouse. One of the things that you start to realize is you can take a holiday. I mean you can go away but you come back to the greenhouse full of day. The chilies and so both my business partner and I back then what we just had a hobby of used to make chili sauce and sell it around the office and the investment banker was working in which was great Traders love buying really hot. Chili sauce has fantastic market and so I have to come up, you know, we thought well, let's try and figure out a solution to the problem. We went out to look and what was available the market and it was really expensive. And so just as a hobby we started playing around and making Things just for our own youth that was never an idea three years ago four years ago. Wasn't it for it to become a business necessarily. These are just things we were playing with and we started posting pictures of it online what we were doing and gradually more and more people started asking where could they get one? Could they buy one from us? And it kind of snowballed from there and it's been taking all of the experience and lessons learned from dealing with lots of data in the market data World Etc and then seeing the advantage of that and figure out how can you bring this to? The growing industry the growing Market. Mmm. And that's been the aim of the business was to focus on what is the primary team of the primary Basics that people just need to get right and then Supply a lot of insight information around that. Okay. Well, I mean, you know, I guess my next question is I mean, how are you actually bringing your idea to reality? I mean, you know, I mean really what what is it? How does it work in? Really? My main question behind this is this how can a home Grove because you know my my audience as you know, it's it's 99.9% people that grow cannabis at home. How can they use this software to benefit their own? Little home grow and also to coin the you know, the name of the podcast cheap outgrow podcast one of the things so when it comes to to Growing, it doesn't really matter what it is that you're growing two of the most important variables are temperature and humidity. That's probably the two most important ones to get dialed in correctly too hot too cold too dry to wet sand it creates a host of problems. So having your environment dialed in on just those two basic Ders solves 99% of the problems out there gets bit of a generalization but it's you know, if you get that correct, then you you've got pretty much everything going and you can use your worry about the lights and the nutrients excetra after that. But the real problem of course is that it's yeah, we found it was all really expensive. So what we brought to Market is a product called the minor. This is the first one to Market which is a Internet of Things device. So always requires an internet connection to work. And it records temperature and humidity data and it has two sensor probes that come with it. One of them that records ambient temperature and humidity and the second one which is waterproof that you can use for measuring root Zone temperature or putting to your nutrient tank or reservoir. For instance to make sure that that's have the right temperature on some of the more recent podcasts that came out by mean context of when this one comes out. They may no longer be recent but discussing IDW see See it really important that that temperature of your dwc staves, correct? You don't want to getting it too long and you don't want to get into cold. And most people just have min max temperature thermometers at best. It doesn't really tell you much so these record data every 30 seconds and which gives you a really granular view on what's going on in your environment and you can see changes that are very very finite level. You can tell if somebody opens a door into a grow space because you'll see a dip in the charts and it being the kind of information that everybody needs to know. I know what happens when the lights go off when you're not there when every time you go into a grow room, you'll grow green house or whatever and you look at the temperature and humidity monitor on the wall. You're probably going and at the same time every day you look at it, and it's the same temperature and humidity everyday great 20 minutes after you walk out. It's be completely different. And so not only do we record the data and give you a user interface to view it but we also allow customers to set alert level so you can tell the system to let you know if temperature goes above a certain level or below a certain level or your humidity is gone above a certain level of below a certain level and it automatically start to notify you so you can take care of an issue as soon as it happens. You're not discovering it six hours later when you go back. Room or when you're out of the cinema, you actually get to get away from being chained to the greenhouse or The Growers room Peter. I'm curious those this software working all growing mediums. Oh, yeah. Absolutely. I mean, this is just want to touring the environment so we have as if there's a ambient temperature and humidity sensor which monitors the are ambient air temperature and humidity and we also calculate Eight VPD vapor pressure deficit be using that sensor. Oh, and by the way, these units retail for 99 pounds 95, which is about a hundred and twenty hundred thirty dollars u.s. So they're not expensive and with that you get the last four weeks of data always you always have access to the last four weeks of age if you get this this rolling history, And that's it. That's the only one time painting. You don't have to pay anything else. It's a subscription after that. There are if you want longer periods of data. Yes, there's a subscription for that but for the four weeks and the charts and the alerts that we give you that's all included in the 99 pounds 95 and as it's just monitoring, you know, it's just really doing temperature and humidity. You can use it for monitoring. Any growth setup doesn't matter what what it is where it is. It wouldn't really work open outdoor environment. It's not really designed for that. But you know, I adore greenhouses the outdoor green at greenhouses, but big green houses going like acreage size greenhouses. Yes, it works in those as well. Okay, the idea is to have a lot. I mean when it comes to monitoring and environment each They're the reality is each sensors only measuring the environment immediately around that sensor. It cannot tell you what's going on three feet away. The only way you know, that is by putting another sensor three feet away throw it away. Yes, right. So this becomes the general problem for people is hmm. You know, when you look at the the problem that growers face is they would love to put in lots of sensors big problem is they cannot afford. Ford to put in lots of Senses not when they're a thousand dollars a pop kind of thing Suddenly It's like no I can't put in 50 senses. That's 50 Grand. All right, but at $100 apart. Yeah, I can put 250 senses. Right and the idea really is to have For I suppose a more commercial guys, but at the same applies to know the smaller home grow, the more senses you have hanging in the place the quicker you're going to identify where the problem started right? Okay, when everything is going Farm doesn't you know, you may say oh it's overkill on the senses. But as soon as there's a problem the sensors help you identify where their problem started when we point out that corner over there where it got too cold. Too wet and that's the the bloodrock started right Peter. I have a question for you. Let's say I have a 5x5 grow space. How many sensors can I possibly fit in there? I mean that's not a very big space you could get away with just putting one in. Okay hang it in the middle and it'll give you You know Aradia roughly a pretty good idea. I mean five by five. Yeah, it's a little small to go and put two and I mean well you do get is you get each sensor comes on Two and a Half meter, which is about three feet six feet six foot plus lead almost closer to 9 feet actually lead so you can position the senses. So in the space that was 5x5. I mean, you don't have to use the waterproof one for measuring the root Zone temperature or something like that. You can just use it for measuring the air temperature so you could just hang them in diagonally opposite. You know hang them in slightly different locations and get a temperature gradient between them. Ideally, you know, it's one every five feet and hence why I 5 by 5 is kind of just on the edge of a chaotic. It's when every 10 feet as I said The more you put in the tighter that resolution on the environment gets so you can spot. You taking a grid and making it smaller and smaller and smaller right by putting more and more units and what we also have is a journal so that people can actually log what they're doing along with the environmental data that goes with it. So when they are You can Define on the platform. You can define a space I could grow room or a greenhouse. You can say how big it is. How many lights are in it? What power each one of those lights is so you can have a total wattage for that space. You can then add containers into the space and each container has a property as in like what type of container is it? Is it a plastic part of fabric part. An auto part nft tray dwc all sorts of different types of containers you can have and inside that container and has a growing medium. So you can Define what that is and then you can Define what plant is in that container. And now you have a grow diary where you can track the environmental data the actual activity that you did on the plant and exactly when you did it all on this timeline. And at the very end, you can record your output so you when you're a new grow you can have a look and see well. What did I do and see what the outcome was and then the next time you do a grow you can make a little change and then see what the outcome is. And again that also applies to the bigger Growers when the bigger grows may have the ability to put in, you know, 50 different types of containers and at the end of a grow they can now go well. Which container grow medium combination gave me the best outcome. So, you know, we love the platform is designed for your home enthusiastic. You have very light level of knowledge on the subject and can gain a lot of benefit from the platform just at the very surface layer where we got nice big Easy-to-Read die. I'll stay tell you when you're out of range and range Etc Easy-to-Read basic charts and then it steps up from that. There are you know, there's levels to it where more advanced hmm Growers are looking for those extra bits. It takes the spring Auto flour challenge, right? Yeah from which every time yeah, which was trying to get hooked up with. Dr. Coco. I mean, yeah, you've got everybody growing the same sort of thing. What would be really cool is everybody was recording it in the journal at the same time and then people at the end when you're comparing your outputs, you can also well, let's see, what did you do to get that? Hmm, and if we're all growing the same The only difference is the technique that we were growing in or the environment. We grew it into there for everything. We see is just phenotypic expression of the environment. We were growing it and therefore allow I mean I would have thought from and you know that little competition or it's a competition that little project it would work really nicely because you'd have standard report at the end with everybody's grow all the academic activity down to my Coding what you how much you proved office and various stages, you know, you can weigh that out to you can see waste final output ratios and things like that Peter the software sounds really cool and all but I'm curious how does this software actually worked? So what you do is you connect the device to your Wi-Fi network. Okay, and that's all you need to do with the as far as the device is concerned. You put it in the location where you need to be. Entering the environment. It takes a 5 volt micro USB power supply source to connect to any old any older. I mean a Samsung phone chargers princes ideal for it and connected to the Wi-Fi on our website. You create an account with each device. It comes with a unique identifier you add that identifier to your account and you tell it what time zone you're in you give the device a name so you know what? You've got more than one mind a unit. I mean you can have a theoretically an unlimited number of associated with your account. But you know, we've got some customers but you've got multiples installed in one space and they've made them like back left front, right? So they know when they're looking at the dashboard they know where the devices are either in the space or in which environment they're sitting in and then you can name each sensor as well. So, you know where it is or for instance. Maybe you've called the waterproof one root Zone. Own and the other one you've called canopy because you've got to hanging in the canopy and the other one you've got in the root. So it makes sense, you know, give these things name so that when you're looking at it, you know what you're seeing just makes it easier to read so my advice to people is to name things as to where it is and what at the monitoring that way when you look at it. It's quick and easy to read and once you've done that about it, then it starts recording data every Every 30 seconds. Hmm. And yeah, okay part of that setup process is you tell it what is the minimum temperature and maximum temperature and minimum humidity and maximum humidity thresholds. So if it breaches any of those and you can change them at any time, you can go in and change them to you might say. Oh, I know it's going to be really warm and I can't actually do anything about it. So I'm just going to up their warning threshold to if it gets above this and I know it's really bad. So you might just need to bump a temporary. Then you can bring it back down again. So for the beginner grower what it really helps you and for any grow it's that What's going on when you're not there and what we've had quite a few customers pick up on is when equipment isn't working as well as they thought it was alright, so, you know, they look at the charts and they see hang on my extraction isn't bringing the temperature down as much as it should be they can see when it kicks in but it's not bringing the temperature down quite as fast as it needs to so there now. I know then you go. It in a bigger extraction then we had one customer notice that the temperature just kept going up and what had happened is actually a piece of cloth had been sucked into the ducting and it got stuck in the fan. Oh boy. You said you would not have noticed that because you know in a minute Max you just see a repeat but you don't know how long it was there for and that's the scary thing and the same goes for you know, when the lights go off. You do not want massive swings and you'll be surprised how fast that swing is when the lights go off temperatures plummet humidity spikes the consequences you go through the dew point temperature at condensation forms ever. So briefly while the environment tries to catch up with the sudden change in temperature. And you just inviting problems then Mmm Yeah Yeah Peter. I'm in the same. In boat myself sometimes after I would turn off my lights my temperature and humidity would go down. I mean personally, I don't think it was that big of a deal but you know, I'm just throwing it out there, you know. Usually this is the thing is that we have to have to tell this to like I us customers are using it it certainly go we stop panicking because they see all these massive temperature and humidity swings which they just never seen before. And you know it all you have to say like look you've been growing quite fine up until you're still growing fine. It's just you seeing it on a more granular level room. So don't go and study try and change everything to make this a dead straight smooth line because it's not necessarily ever going to happen. But what it does allow you to start taking a look at is what could I check if I was going to change one thing here? What would I change? So like, you know when? Lights go off temperature crashes. All right, so maybe I'll turn my extraction fans or two minutes before the lights go off and only turn them back on again 30 minutes after the lights have gone off. So just gives that the space-time to naturally cool ever so slightly and therefore the humidity comes down, but more gradually with really you want to be going from daytime to nighttime temperature. You want to be doing that and about About 30 to 45 minutes. You don't want to do it in the 10-minute swing or even less in some cases and then you have the same on the other side and then you go from You know when the lights came on suddenly you have this massive jump. No way. Does that actually happen? Hmm, you do kind of want to have their temperature going to ramp up. You don't want it going from nothing to really high relatively. So basically when the temperature changes you want your environment to change slowly rather than quickly. Yeah, you don't want any I mean, it's the same with humidity. You don't really want rapid rapid wings and it's just at the end of the day when you're using artificial lighting U-turn and at the start of the day when you're using artificial lighting, I mean, that's who you have the sudden drop and increase in temperature and humidity. And it's usually when the lights go off as a death the problem in the plants have been heavily transpiring throughout the day then the lights go off which straightaway brings the temperature down those plants are still heavily transpiring for the next however, long while stomata closed down and so they just pump a lot of extra humidity into the environment and the problem you now have is because as your temperature comes down relative humidity will climb even quicker. Because cooler air holds less water. So 75% humidity at 27 degrees is a hundred percent humidity at take 22 degrees. And at that point if you go any lower or at 22 degrees in this example your it just turns to condensation moisture can't go anywhere else. So that's the real catch that you have. Is this sudden drop in temperature? Doesn't give the room time to sort of come down naturally and that's where the problem is coming. And if you're doing a lot if you're venting is external you don't tend to suffer from it. So badly because you're sucking all of that are out but in sealed environment, it's particularly noticeable because they're not actually replenishing the are in the environment so to speak. Okay, and if you look at you what I've seen happening grabbing talking about this difference in the temperatures when you and in monitoring the environment, maybe your listeners who live in colder environments, especially in the winter in the grow room. Around the bottom of the the bottom foot if they're bringing cold air from inside from outside into the environment now probably notice that they get condensation on the bottom foot and above that but it's fine and that's just because that cool air coming in. It's so low down the humidity. It just can't hold that moisture in the air and so it's all coming out nice and convincing as you As the as the warm air in the room gets cooled at that lower level from the cold air coming in it all comes out over and that's something apart that people often don't even look at it. Which is Yeah, the more we play around at the platform ourselves and more you start to realize hang up his all these other little bits and that's where the mold comes in, you know, because nobody's looking there nobody's thinking about the the corner and the grow room that's in the optimum mold generating, you know environment. They're all looking at the canopy. Yeah. It's all about tracking your information and making life a whole lot simpler. And if you're trying to explain like, you know your And your problem in the with your grow and you need to explain it to somebody usually the first thing they'll ask you as well. What's the temperature and humidity be made of the last two weeks all week? Because that's really the last two weeks of what's been going on is What's led up to now and see that you know what you got to be looking back at and now what you can do you can take out your phone or pull up on a web page or your tablet PC and show the person table. This is What's been going on see if when you go into your hydro shop and you need to get some advice, you know, you can actually show them what's been going on in the environment and they can look at it and say well, okay, the your temperatures are too high or too low or it's too humid. It's too dry. And if it's not the case, they can say well then let's look into you know, what lights using what nutrients are using. But before you look at your lights and your nutrients Etc make sure that the environment is dialed in because the best lights the best nutrients in the world and their shit. Then you're not getting anything out at the end Peter as you know, my podcast is called cheap homegrown. So if you could could you please talk a little bit about the cost of this software? Yeah. Well, we do the unit's moment with the UK retail prices 1995. The US retail price is trying to do the conversions about a hundred and thirty dollars give or take depending on what the exchange rates doing at the time, but it's around $130. And they are available. We do actually have a shop in the u.s. An online shop in the u.s. That stalks them. So for customers in the US, it's quicker and easier for them to order it from from web Hydro.com. There we go plug for them. Decision shipping and time it's local and that's it. That's all you need to pay. There's no additional subscription over there the journal the four weeks of data the alerts that's all included. So you can always look at the last four weeks. You can download the graph so that you can keep copies of them if you want to print them up. And the really nice thing is it's available from any internet-connected device any mobile or smart mobile phone tablet PC doesn't matter where you are. If you've got access to the internet, you can keep an eye on what's going on in your grow and learn it. Okay, and that's really one of the things a lot of people like it's that I mean, especially in the US as somebody pointed out when soon as you start growing you suddenly realize chit. I can't go away for the weekend to can't go on holiday because you kind of Through that grow all of a sudden this gives you that freedom back take a break go to the cinema away for the weekend either customers you go away for two weeks all of a sudden because they can keep an eye on what's going on or what and when they've got somebody going in and looking after it for them. They can make sure that it's all still being done properly. All right. Well, I mean Peter I mean this is a question that I like to ask everybody that comes on the show. So I'm going to ask you man. And that question is are there any questions? Questions that I should be asking in are there any final statements that you would like to make? I know I kind of put you on the spot there man. But yeah, I mean it just sort of the context of what we do. Are there questions to ask personally. I think we covered quite a bit. But if I'm missing anything, please feel free to say so right now, I guess one of the things is you know, do we go into more detail? Perhaps everything we go into more detail. We were at data company. Yes, we do. bets I can't think of anything to talk my head. No problem. Oh, no worries. As far as final statement goes, you know, our goal is to bring you know, these kind of Data Insights and analytics are being The Preserve of the big. Boys and the big players it's been out of the price range of the average grow. And the reason why the big boys and that all have all the big players all have a Competitive Edge is because they all have the data they know what to do to get the result they're after and they they've spent a lot of time Gathering and collecting it and understanding it and our aim is to democratize access to that so that we've priced it, you know. Have the minded unit at the moment, but we're bringing out a CO2 monitor. We're going to be doing a moisture monitor as well and the various others, but they're all modular and they're all going to Identity priced in that. I kinda wouldn't 1350 US dollar Mark hundred 250 pound Mark and we do have a controller coming out as well. We're all of these bits and pieces link into each other and can be dynamically. Regulating your environment, but all done cost-effectively are there's no need for this technology to cost an arm and a leg. It really isn't and I want the guy at home to be able to say yes. I want to be able to dive in and see something analytics. I really want to get an understanding of what's going on. I mean, I want people to be able to visualize their grow room through data visualization and the chance that we're bringing out what Can really understand what's going on, but do it in there. A way that's easy to digest so basically present the data in a easy readable way where a unsophisticated grower can read it and understand where they may or may not be going wrong. Yeah or doing it right and then do again fold the person there wants to drill a bit deeper. I mean, they can click through it and go from a high level summary down into the more nitty-gritty stuff where it's too Hi make ducting high-end, but it's just too detailed for the beginner, but they'll get there eventually because through Natural Curiosity of investigating drilling into the platform. You started just naturally see the correlation and the effect of oh, I did that there that shows up here in the data or what does that mean and you know you Natural Curiosity will hopefully drive a lot of people to become. Better Growers because they can understand what they're doing. They can see if you know that it's easier to trace it back workout what you did to get the result that you ended up with. It's not just blind stabbing around, you know something we're playing around with is being able to Overlay your data with the group's data. So if you're looking at your plants and your going everybody else is saying they should look you know, like exit the stage and they're currently looking like why you're not quite sure what's going on. You may say well, let me just compare me to everybody else and show my environmental data here and let me see how eyeli compared to them and maybe you've pick up straight away that your humidity is way higher than everybody else's you go. Well, I be straight away then you bring that down. Again, it's just a way of being able to troubleshoot quicker. Right and for commercial guys that's important. Isn't that growing medium based never temperature the temperature and humidity that you grow them at is not going to be drastically different just because of the growing in use. All right, you know depending on what it is that you're growing if you were to take you know, like for North America, that's a you take cannabis as an example. It has an Optimum. Temperature and as an optimal humidity and it you know, there's its Bounty down and it's kind of between 22 to 27 degrees centigrade and the humidity range to me quite varied as well 52. I mean take Durbin as an example the minimum humidity at the minimum average humidity and durban's about 70% So, you know, it is used that that's an example the part that used to grow in a very high humidity. environment so Yeah, it doesn't matter what the grow medium per se is that's how fast how vigorous how you know, depending on your moral View and growing organically or non organically cetera. Those are those decisions but they'd all be running in a very similar environment it cultivar specific. So you may say something that naturally comes from high up in the mountains is used to Lower humidity and slightly cooler temperatures but more UV because of the height and altitude a tropical plant is on the coast is used to hire humidities higher temperatures may be a little less a little less UV. So what you really wanted to actually say show me an environment of somebody growing something similar to me doesn't have to be in the same medium, but let's say the same genus of plants. And to me so I can make sure that my environment in line with that. Don't show me somebody grown carrots if I'm growing apples another one. And again, that's the purpose of the journal is it allows us to be able to help people on that Frank being a little earlier very high level. What would you can drill down and say okay. I want to know how I'm comparing to others doing the similar thing Peter. Thank you for being on the show and I will sir. We talk to you soon. But if you could could you please plug your Instagram an absolute pleasure, and we can be found at PL grow systems or at PL growth systems on Instagram and thank you once again to chain. Hello cheap homegrown Nation. This is Shea McConnell from the cheap homegirl podcast and thank you for listening to my podcast with Peter. Peter can be found on Instagram @ PL. Grow systems that's plg rrow sys tem SPL grow systems on Instagram. I've been podcasting for nearly one year and have many other helpful growing cannabis podcasts in my library of content. I encourage you to go to cheap home grow.com to sign up for my email list and newsletter and browse all past cannabis growing episodes. I release a show every Tuesday and do a live show called growing with my fellow Growers Sunday night 7 p.m. Eastern on YouTube. You can find me on Instagram at cheap home grow and growing with my fellow Growers. Thank you everyone. I look forward to seeing you next Tuesday in this upcoming Sunday. As always. Please rate review And subscribe. I am reaching out to you to ask you really one question and I want to know how am I doing as a podcaster? What topics do you want me to cover? Is there anything specific please reach out to me? Please? Get back to me. 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I had a fun and interesting conversation with Peter from PL Grow Systems. Peter is from the UK and being an entrepreneur that's involved with cannabis in the UK has its own set of challenges but Peter and his partner formed a company called PL Grow Systems. Peter comes on the show to talk about the importance of tracking your data when growing at home. He walks us through the steps as to how his software works and makes a good point about how the cost of this technology isn't nearly as expensive as it was in the past and fortunately, the price is going to go down in the future while the quality goes higher. I know this is a slight change from my typical "how to grow" podcast but I figured you would enjoy it. Please let me know what you think of the podcast in the comments section below. 