"nanook" wrote in message
...

Use a search engine google, or my favorite, Copernic.
Look at the grow sites for hydroponics. (loads of info and parts in
the pot growers sites as well).

I have made a number of attempts, but usually found it an exercise in
frustration since either the components I found were serious overkill or I
didn't know what I was looking at (since I know nothing about electronics,
and the information was presented in a way that only someone wit an
electronics background has a hope to understand). And there was invariably
a problem with information overload, with a lot of hits referring to pages
that were either irrelevant or containing information I just didn't
understand.

As an example, I found myself at Honeywell's website, and while that site is
huge, and I believe they have some components that may be useful to me, on
most of their website I had no idea what I was looking at or how it might be
useful to me; and even when I do find something, if it is of research
calibre, it is both much too expensive and serious overkill for my purposes.
I do not need nearly the precision that is typical of devices used in a
research or industrial lab. I spoke to one vendor yesterday, at a trade
show, who could provide industrial calibre equipment, but he'd be charging
of the order of a few hundred dollars per device/sensor: which is
appropriate for a comercial greenhouse, but I'd need to be able to assemble
the entire suite of sensors and controllers for what he'd sell a single
device for.

I have been in the microfilm, camera,
processing and printing industry most of my life, so I have tested
many parts and sensors for reliability. I also am an electronic
hobbyist, so I build a lot of my own circuit boards for certain
applications. You can cannibalize cheap thermostats from home depot
for sensors.

Can you recommend a good book or two that would give me the background I'd
need to handle this particular project?

Try a couple of these places as well.

http://www.controlsupply.com/humidity.htm
http://www.greenair.com/product.htm
http://www.atlantishydroponics.com/index.html
http://www.fullbloomhydroponics.com/
http://www.greenbeam.com/home.stm
http://www.graybar.com
http://www.grainger.com/Grainger/wwg/start.shtml


Thanks, I'll take a look.

Cheers,

Ted