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The AutoFog controller measures
air temperature and relative humidity (and optionally solar PAR or a
wet-leaf sensor) and uses this information to
intelligently control the fogging in a greenhouse or grow room. The fog
may be produced by any means including high pressure fogging system, low
pressure misters or a spinning disk fogging fan.
Fogging may be used to cool the growing environment and also to
humidify it in dry weather. In
very humid, warm weather the fan may be allowed to run but fogging will
be inhibited. The grower has
full control over all of these functions. The controller has eight outputs
which are used as follows :- In the case of a fan-fogger, one
output is used to switch on
the fan, one to switch on the spinning disk and the other to operate a
solenoid valve to control the water flow; a forth output can be used for
an external alarm system. The fan-fogger may thus run on its own as a simple stirring fan or may be joined by the spinning disk whilst the water is pulsed on/off to produce puffs of fog. The interval time between puffs is set by the grower as is the minimum and maximum ON times. The controller then adjusts the puff size over this range proportionally to the temperature/ humidity error that it is trying to correct.
For the pump and solenoid fogger, one output may be used to operate a stir fan, one to switch on a pump and the other outputs may be used to operate from one to six zone solenoid valves. In a similar way, the pressure fogging system may operate a stir fan in addition to the variable sized puffs of fog as described above.
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