TokyoB wrote:tenuki wrote:Doing the same thing but using humidification beads (hold at steady 65% humidity) and maybe a bit of ventilation. still dialing it it, will post picts and instructions when it's working to my satisfaction.
What type of container are you using?
food safe 5 gallon buckets from lowes - people use them for long term emergency food storage.
I'm experimenting with airflow and figuring out a cheap way to block light. My first try for light is using butcher/kraft paper to line the inside and for airflow punch some holes.
The humidity beads are essentially like
cigar afficianos use - they max out at 65, which is perfect, and to get to that you have to add water to them fairly regularly - so it would be entirely possible to raise and lower humidity over time. I use
kitty litter for the beads, that freaks some cigar folks out, but many of us have been using them for years in our cigar humidors with no discernible difference from the more expensive cigar focused ones. I'm guessing they are made in the same factory and just marketed different ($$$).
Current iteration the beads are held in some food mesh bags and set in round puer cake sized and shaped bamboo trays. This makes it easy to add to my existing yixing storage jars too, etc and fits in with the cakes seamlessly. Still dialing this in and finding cheap food safe off the shelf components that work as well.
I think a more sophisticated system is in the eventual works with humidity sensors, modular connectors for airflow/control between buckets and some fan run via embedded processor ( like an
arduino ), but my side projects tend to take several years since I only occasionally work on them and have um, many...
cheap and easy first, then add controllable, etc later.
My goals are:
Inexpensive - each module should cost under 10 bucks
modular - grow as your collection grows, stackable, space efficient
easy - minimal build, setup and maintenance
simple design - fail-safe, minimalist
for eventual controller setup:
modular, easy, simple, stand alone
remotely monitor-able - humidity and temp, with alarms,etc
open source - there may be some stuff like arduino code, circuits, 3d printer files that are produced, they will all be open sourced and published for others to use/improve.