Case Studies

Siemens PLC Programming for Grow Room Automation

Marijuana Grow Room
Posted in HMI and SCADA, Manufacturing Automation and Intelligence, PLC Programming, Siemens PLC

Summary

DMC developed a PLC-based system for managing the environmental conditions in a marijuana grow house.

Solution

DMC’s customer was looking for a Siemens-based solution to control and automate the environmental conditions of a marijuana grow house. DMC began by meeting with the client to lay out plans for how the system should work and initial layout of the controls. We then programmed the PLCs and HMIs to provide multi-zone recipe based environmental and lighting controls.

System Features

The system DMC built provides complete automated control of the following:

  • Air temperature (heating and cooling)
  • Ventilation
  • CO2 concentration
  • Feed System (nutrient dosing and root flush)
  • Humidity
  • Lighting (simulated sunrise / sunset daily cycles)
  • Access to the unit
  • pH
  • Water temperature

Customer Benefits

  • Complete automation of environmental and lighting controls
  • Multi-stage / multi-phase recipe control of all parameters to simulate a full growth cycle
  • Door controls and access logs for security tracking
  • Designed for flexible expansion to allow multi-zone grows
  • Web browser access for remote control / monitoring

Technologies

  • TIA Portal
  • SIMATIC S7-1500 PLC & ET200SP Remote I/O
  • WinCC Comfort Panels and Sm@rtServer