The cannabis dry used in this article was performed at one of Growvera's early adopter cultivation facilities in February of 2023.
Figure 1. Demo Dry 2 and the events that occurred during the drying process
During this dry, the cultivator was experimenting with a new drying room. During the 8 days it took to dry the harvest, the drying room lost power and had a control system malfunction.
ZONE was able to alert the cultivator of the adverse conditions and informed the decision to transfer the harvest to a different drying room before further damage was done to the crop. After the switch, the cultivator successfully achieved the ideal moisture level for the strain without encountering any additional problems.
Once a Dry has begun, the most current data points for average temperature, humidity, and moisture will appear underneath the End Dry button. Data is updated by ZONE every 15 minutes via cloud analytics.
C / F ℹ️
Preferred temperature units may be set to either Fahrenheit or Celsius by navigating to the user icon in the top right corner of the ZONE dashboard and changing the Preferred temperature unit drop down menu.
Data history is displayed in a line plot under the Data History section. The plot displays four lines.
Data history for any particular dry can be downloaded using the download icon directly next to the Data History section title. Hovering over the plot will bring up a tooltip displaying the temperature, humidity, and moisture point that the cursor is closest to.
Figure 3. Example data history plot with tooltip that displays time, average temperature, average humidity, and average moisture.
To focus on a specific section of the data, simply click on the points within the range of interest. This allows you to zoom in and get a closer look at the details.
Zoom Example ℹ️
If the data of interest spans from 2/4/23 10:04 AM to 2/5/23 7:03 PM, clicking on the data point closest to 2/4/23 10:04 AM and then clicking on 2/5/23 7:03 PM would zoom into that section.
Use the Reset Plot button above the plot to reset the zoom view.
ZONE runs continuous analytics on the data collected from ZONE sensors to monitor deployment state and dry room conditions. Alerts are issued when the data meets certain criteria that are set via the dry configuration. After an alert is issued, it will be stored under the Event History section of the dry that it occurred in.
A ZONE alert has the following components
The alert configuration for a dry is visible below the name of the dry. In Demo Dry 2, the alert configuration is
Figure 6. A sample dry alert configuration highlighted in yellow.
If the average temperature falls outside the acceptable range for 2 consecutive data points, an alert is triggered by the analytics. After the first alert has been issued, the analytics will re-issue the alert for every 3 consecutive points that fall outside the acceptable range. This ensures that ZONE prevents an excessive number of alerts from filling up inboxes, while still effectively communicating the ongoing presence of adverse conditions.
In addition to pushing an alert to email, ZONE saves the alert as an event under the Event History section.
In Demo Dry 2 on 2/4/23 at 1:04 PM a high temperature condition was detected. The analytics triggered a critical high temperature alert that was sent via email. The alert was then logged under the Event History section of the dry.
Root Cause ℹ️
In this specific instance, the high temperatures in the drying room were the result of a control system failure that resulted in a malfunctioning HVAC
Humidity alerting has identical functionality to the temperature alerting.
In Demo Dry 2 on 2/2/23 at 11:48 PM a high humidity condition was detected. ZONE analytics triggered a critical high humidity alert that was sent via email and logged to the Event History.
Root Cause ℹ️
The high humidities in Demo Dry 2 were attributed to a power outage in the drying room.
Unlike temperature and humidity, ZONE sends moisture alerts after the moisture has hit a target value called the ideal moisture in the dry configuration.
Figure 4. Ideal Moisture. On 2/9/23 at 8:18 PM, ZONE detected that the target moisture had been achieved.
In Demo Dry 2 on 2/9/23 at 8:18 AM, ZONE detected that the target moisture of 16% had been achieved. An alert was sent to the cultivator, who stopped the dry shortly afterwards.
ZONE will issue different levels of alerts in response to sensor and gateways losing network connection.
When gateways lose network connection, it affects the data of multiple sensors. As a result, gateways losing network connection are given a high alert level.
Gateway online/offline state may be monitored at anytime under the Settings tab and the Gateways Section.
Alerts regarding sensors losing network connection increase in severity with the number of sensors that are already offline. For example, if 9 out of 12 sensors in a sensor pack are already offline and a 10th sensor loses network connection, ZONE will issue the offline alert at a critical level. However, if only 1 out of 12 sensors are offline and a 2nd loses network connection, then the alert will be issued at an Info level.
Figure 11. An example assigned sensors section.
Sensor online/offline state may be monitored at any time through the Assigned Sensors section on the dry page.
Read more about the ZONE dashboard and sensors on our knowledge base or our website.
Happy Drying 🍃