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The CAPTAIN 8 (AV8) greenhouse ventilation controller runs vents, curtains and fans from a single unit. Setup, sensor wiring and the parameter reference are in the CAPTAIN 8 greenhouse guide, with fault-finding in the troubleshooting guide.
This is captain six. The six stands for six relays. So you can have six different circuits hooked up. That could be six fans, six heaters, three fans and three heaters or one vent. uses two relays because you have up and down so you have to two separate relay.so, you see the relays. Each one of these are the relays. There are six of them that holds up to the captain six.Six relays. It takes two relays for a vent, for curtain motor, for up and down, up and you have down. So that will use up two relays. So that's the biggest thing to know when you're sizing the system is that you will run out of relays after a while.So if you have vent or curtain motor that will take up two, then if you add another vant that will take up another two. And then you'll have these remaining for any combination of heaters and fans. You can also do lights that will take one. There's a dehumidification function that will take one.Basically, run a dehumidifier. Again, the captain six pulls off for six relays and that allows you to do six things. But vent will take up two.
Understanding how automatic temperature offsets work to make tomato growing easier. The Captain6 allows up to 3 sets of temperature settings. This allows you to vent off humidity by warming the greenhouse and opening the vents to drop the humidity in the morning. Temperature differential, Primary. We have primary force dif one and force diff two. Basically, this is allowing you to force it in any one of the dif's modes. The dif is temperature differential, or you want the temperature at different set points throughout the day for your cartons event. And you can see that. You basically. If you have tomatoes and you want to cool it off in the morning to get some of the humidity out. You would use temperature difs to do that because you would bring 08:00 in the morning. You would make your temperature drop by about five degrees and that will force the vents open and you can cut your heaters during that short period where you have your low dip and that'll get rid of your humidity. And you just go in here. Settings vent one, set point at 60 degrees. The vant number one, dip one, put that to 58. If you use dif two, you can set that just go even colder yet down to 55, 53. Since we only have one curtain enabled, we've got the vent one, dif two, set point if one set point, and the normal one. So we can Allow it to go in difs by the clock.Or we can force it here. We can change difs, dif one on time is going to go into dif-1 2:12 in the morning and it's going to end at 03:00 A.m.In the morning, which doesn't really make sense. But for the argument between two and 2:12 and 03:00, we're going to be running at a lower temperature setpoint and you change that over here with the clock. You can force it we can force it to that cooler temperature just by pressing force.dif one, we're going to put it back to automatic and you can change the time here changing and there you can change the diff set points again.
The sensors for the captain six. you can have up to two temperature sensors. It comes with a standard with one temperature sensor. You can add the second one. The standard is one. And then you can also add humidity. You can add a rain sensor and you can add a wind speed. So it allows you to do a couple different things two temperature the humidity, rain and wind speed. The two temperatures allow you to split zones to have one vent and like two different high tunnels. The humidity allows you to snap a fanon when it gets too humid. The second thing that humidity can do for you is open a vent for so many seconds or just partially allow some of the humid air to escape. The wind speed allows you to shut vents when it gets too windy. The rain shuts vents when it starts raining. So the rain only affects events. It shuts when it starts raining. The wind speed simply shuts events when it gets too windy outside and the humidity opens event just a little bit or snaps a fan on. And the temperature sensor allows you to split zones.
Navigating menu and overides of the AutoVent LLC greenhouse ventilation control system Here is the main screen of the AutoVent Captain6 greenhouse. That's the time. Here's the temperature, which is mighty cold because there is no probe hooked up. And here is the override you can put on auto. Now you can see that one is yellow because it's forced on, put off turns gray. If it turns on by itself, it will turn light green with a little M and an A there for automatic versus manual. So again, this is a home screen. You press in any one of these to go to the overrides or you press in the temperature, and you go to system settings. All your set points are in here. We have a little description under each parameter. There are also numbered over here, P 15331. All the P number here hold out and we have a nice description. Again, if you want to reconfigure things, you can configure the A number of vent channels. Put that to one vent first. Vent channel number one.A relay number one. Number of fans. Let's give it two fans. They're going to start at relay number five. Take that down to 3No heaters. One light. And the light is going to be number six. Restarting. Look at that. Here we have one vent, one open, and closed fan, one fan, two, and light. What we did is we reconfigured the whole system. It gives us one light, two fans, and one vent. This is to show you how easy it is to reconfigure your system to do different things. So the same controller will fit many applications. And it tells you right across the bottom what each relay is for. And it even shows we have an extra one because we only have five relays assigned. If you want to see which relay does what you like off, you just click it on and off and see what your relay opens here on the back.
I'm here to show you how to wire in a motor into captain six. I ran the cord in through the door. This is not how you would do it in real life. But for the sake of the illustration this was really easy. Got a wire it in, goes close. The motor runs open and runs the other way. This motor is running, it goes too hard, this little breaker Will pop out. Or I could pull it out, and it'll stop. These little fuses protect the motors from going too hard. The motor stops always. Come check the fuse, again I'm showing you how to connect a motor to the captain six. Bring your motor leads in and connect right here terminals one and two. If it's setup up where relays wanted to, and that's all there is to connecting a motor. You do have to make sure that this cord stays shorter than 200ft. There's a limitation on how far the motor can be from the control box. So you got to be within about 200ft, and then the rest of these contacts. Are available for heaters or fans.
In this video, we'll be discussing tomato mold, how to prevent it. We'll be discussing ways to control humidity to prevent it from ruining your tomatoes. If you're growing tomatoes, be sure to watch this video to learn about the dangers of tomato mold, how to prevent and control it
Greenhouse ridge vent getting slammed by wind? Reduce the risk of high wind speeds damaging your grow structure by automatically shutting the vents with a wind sensor. Greenhouse wind damage is very expensive when it happens. Reduce the risk by installing a AutoVent controller with a wind sensor. Works with all AutoVent Captain controllers.
Greenhouse build? Update app to match your ventilation equipment.
In this video, we'll be discussing greenhouse vents & fan connections. Captain6 environmental controller use case. Greenhouse ventilation is crucial for keeping your plants healthy and growing, but often times the fans and vents in your greenhouse are not working as they should. In this video, we'll be discussing different types of greenhouse fans and how to connect them to the Captain6 environmental controller. By following these steps, you'll be able to correct any issues with your greenhouse ventilation and keep your plants healthy and growing!
Repairing the power circuits on the AutoVent Captain8. This is a video about how to fix Captain8 . By installing a greenhouse ventilation system, you'll be able to regulate the air temperature and humidity in your greenhouse, increasing crop yields! If you're looking to increase your crop yields and keep your greenhouse air temperature and humidity regulated, then look no further than Captain8 . By installing our greenhouse ventilation system, you'll make sure your greenhouse is working at its optimum potential!
Wiring a rain sensor to the Captain8 system
Wiring and programming the wind sensor to a Captain8 greenhouse environmental ventilation controller.
Remapping and shorting the bus bars on a Captain 8 or Captain6 controller. The bus bars are shipped by default to allow low voltage motors to be powered directly from the controller. If you want to repurpose the vent outputs for another app, remove the bus bars. This changes the outputs to dry contacts.
Regulating temperature to reduce humidity? Using temperature differentials, to drop the greenhouse temperature right before the sun comes out. This lowers the humidity disease pressure. Do it automatically with AutoVent Captain controllers.
Greenhouse build wiring in a Captain8 to a pair of vents, 1 fan zone and 2 heating zones. This greenhouse build is a great way to save energy and make your outdoor gardening experience more enjoyable!
Are you not sure which controller would be a good one for your greenhouse? Say, I build controllers for a living and we have the same problem even within our company. What, what should people use? So, I, I just got done writing this little book with pictures to try to help guide people through what, what they'd be looking at. Start out with the, uh, the three main greenhouse controllers we've got. This is, uh, Ventstar. This is like the low end one. Here's all the advantages that that one has. And here's the Captain Eight. And this is the advantages for this one. Uh, you can download this book or just give us a call and we'll mail you one. Um, it's nothing real fancy. And here's, uh, the Captain 10. It's all the advantages. Um, if you notice, there's reasons not to use the vent store. Reasons not to use the Captain 8. Ha! We don't have any reasons why not to use the Captain 10. But anyway, I'll go through and show you what the main differences are. It's basically different layouts. You gotta look what your greenhouse is. We've got roll up sides of heaters. You go through it and find your style greenhouse in here, and then match it up, and that'll give you an idea of what to use. And I'll go over a couple things you might find interesting, like do you need humidity or not? So if you need, if you got wet leaves, rotting plants, bud rot. If you've got those, you might want to consider humidity and you'll want to use a controller that can handle the humidity sensor. And this will tell you, then when you actually are using it, these are all the perimeters that you can adjust. You have, uh, you have problems with, uh, rain blowing in. Uh, you know, do you want to shut the vents when it's raining? Do you want to protect the crop when it's raining? You know, if that's important to you, check which controller can use rain. Same thing for wind speed. You know, if it blows apart when it's too windy. If that's a concern, check which controller can use that. Oh, and do you want to use time differentials? What's a diff? That could be a whole thing in itself. Basically offset the temperature at a certain time of the day. And yeah, it's just 30 pages long. And it's pictures of the wiring sketches of how you'd wire your greenhouse and which controller would make the most sense. So each one has the setup perimeters. So if you had this and you had a controller and you had this, This will show you the exact setup perimeters to have the controller do that just for you. So that's the idea. If you've got questions, we can send you a hard copy or send us an email and we'll just email a copy over to you. It's not much to it. We just print it out and send them out as needed because it's a constant dynamic as we make updates that'll be in here. So if you've got questions, give us a call and we'll help you out.
Here is what we're doing, Its not all the best I live on my family farm. We have 180 cows . This is our heifer barn for up till breeding age. This building is 60 feet long, 30 feet deep. It holds from five months to breeding age heifers. Around 45 square foot per animal. , you can see they've got manure on their sides because we had a bunch of wet weather, and this is overcrowded, we are not ideal. But what we're doing to get away with our problems is the building isn't real deep and we have pasture access. So if it wouldn't be for that, we would have problems. It gets really soupy in here quick. We try to leave them have pasture access we keep them in pretty soon if it's wet weather. So we don't turn it into a mud hole and chew up the Creek bank. if you got fans, it'll help keep it dried out. One fan can cover a big area, but not when you're overcrowded. You need to have them closer together for cold weather so you can keep the air slowly moving. We keep that fan running down to freezing. We should have two big ceiling fans to keep even amount of slow moving air going all the time. We have a curtain on the back. We leave it up all the time because we're overcrowded. We only put it down when it's really bad weather. It's got to be raining really bad or really windy and cold. We have a four foot wall in the back that blocks some of the wind, but we err on the side of keeping it too cold because of how overcrowded it is, You've got to keep the air moving. You've got to keep the curtains open. And your building can't be too deep. we are only 30 feet deep. The air gets nasty really soon. If you had a hundred foot deep building and a lot of wet bedding in there there's almost no hope. But with a narrower building, the stink blows out easier. If you want to overcrowd a facility make sure that it's narrow enough so that there's fresh air blowing through.
📍 We're here at our family's calf barn. . Right now it is in January is 20 degrees and It's cold. The buckets are all frozen up, but we, and this is simply an open front with a plywood dividers, wind breaks in between every 12 foot. To keep the wind from blowing sideways across the calves. Oh, we have to keep the bedding dry. We're replacing the bedding pretty often. If we're not overcrowded, we're cleaning out once, once the calves are out of here, which is whenever they're off milk, but we've got two curtains on the back and those are set, the top one will open, start opening at around 22 degrees. As long as it's not windy, then the bottom one will open it around mid thirties to 40, if it's not windy. So. I actually built this ventilation controller, one of the first ones ever made. And, so as long as it's not windy, the curtains will open up when it's pretty cold. Because calves need fresh air. So that, the whole idea of what I've been working behind is natural ventilation. And if it's not windy, you want fresh air. And it's still better than if you had a completely closed barn. You don't get any sunlight in. So from a disease standpoint. This would be better. A closed barn would be warmer for the people, but friendly for the people and healthy for the calves just don't seem to go together very well. Winter time, heifer barn management. See, I'm here at our family farms, heifer barn. It's a, it's got the heifers that are about five months up till getting close to breeding age. There's a pastor out back there. It's cold right now. And if you can see it's overcrowded They're a little dirtier than what they should the management here isn't quite good as what it should be But anyway, there's a single curtain on the back that is supposed to start rolling up around Freezing as long as it's not windy So I got my start doing ventilation controls all for natural ventilated barns because that's what we do here But if you look at this one of the thing from a curtain management standpoint There's holes in the back because we don't have we're leaving the heifers lick the fabric at places or they can get to it at places And they'll chew through it fairly quickly. It's really tough to keep a curtain functioning if animals can get against it. So if you're trying for longevity on your curtains, on your heifer barn, do not let the heifers be able to lick it because as you see here, it makes holes in it and it's really hard on it. So we believe in the cold weather philosophy. We do not keep them closed up. The front's open. We're here in Pennsylvania right now. 20 degrees and a little windy. Simply getting them out of the wind is what we're trying for. If you're looking to automate a barn like this, we've done over 30, 000 control systems in the last 15 years and a lot of them are barns like this. We do fans and curtain controls. So in the, with the fans in the summertime, you can keep the bedding dried out when you're in the cooler, wet weather, if you run them slow or the real damp muggy days, you can prevent some respiratory issues by keeping the air moving the 20 degrees. Why we don't run the fans, but. They sure help cold weather, freestyle barn management. So here we're at our, here in my family's a freestyle barn. It's around 180 cows. They're milking around 105 pounds or so here in January of 2025. I just want to show you what we're doing. Right now we're running in natural mode, which means just with the curtains, there's no powered ventilation at all right now. And it's set to the defaults that we built our ventilation controllers at, which is the top curtain started opening around 20 degrees, as long as it's not on the windward side. So you can see the South side is open and the North side is closed. And the only difference is the wind. Cause I found out that. It's not the temperature as much as it's the wind. So if you want to try to keep your respiratory problems down, you'll want to keep the barn as cold as possible. This has not really worked well for robot barns, but if you can get away with it, leave your barn, get cold because you'll have less respiratory problems. So as, as a day progresses, the other curtains will start opening up as it gets warmer. Right now it's around 20 degrees and five miles an hour, kind of from the North. We appreciate you watching and hit like, as it helps us help more people. https://autoventllc.com
Can fabric-covered barns keep cows cool during extreme heat? Dairy consultant Michael Brusselberg visits an 8-year-old We Cover barn operated by the Bitler family to evaluate how ventilation systems perform in real-world summer conditions. What You'll Learn: • What makes fabric-covered barns different from freestall barns • How radiant heat behaves in a We Cover structure • Why sprinkler timing affects cow cooling efficiency • The impact of pusher and ceiling fan angles on airflow • Recommended stocking density for dry bedding and cow cleanliness • Real lessons from 97°F weather in Pennsylvania 🎤 Featuring: Michael Brusselberg, Regenerating Dairy 📍 Filmed on-site at Bitler Farms, Pennsylvania 📞 Questions about fans or ventilation controllers? Call 610-987-0488
https://autoventllc.com Discover the six best ways to cool your dairy barn, This video highlights the widespread use and effectiveness of panel fans as a key component of efficient ventilation systems. Learn how proper cow care and barn design can contribute to a cooler, more comfortable environment for your livestock, especially during warmer months.
Ever wonder how your AutoVent controller goes from our shop to real working barns? In this behind-the-scenes video, we show part of the process — from packaging and preparation to seeing our systems working through snow, wind, and rain in real livestock environments. At AutoVent, we focus on practical ventilation solutions built for real farm conditions. Learn more about AutoVent: https://autoventllc.com #AutoVent #BarnVentilation #DairyFarming #BehindTheScenes
Healthy calves become productive cows. In this video, Kevin Hoover shares four practical ways to improve calf and heifer health, reduce sickness, and promote better growth. Whether you're raising dairy replacements or beef calves, these simple management practices can improve animal comfort, performance, and profitability. Learn from real-world farm experience and discover how small changes can make a big difference in your herd. #DairyFarming #CalfCare #HeiferManagement #CattleHealth #BeefCattle #LivestockManagement #FarmLife #DairyCows #Calves #Agriculture https://autoventllc.com
Should you choose a bedded pack barn or freestalls for your dairy herd? In this video, Kevin Hoover compares the pros and cons of both systems, including animal comfort, bedding costs, labor requirements, building costs, manure management, and stocking density. Whether you're building a new dairy barn or considering a renovation, this video will help you understand the tradeoffs between bedded packs and freestalls. For barn ventilation recommendations and fan sizing: 📞 Call 610-987-0488 #DairyFarming #Freestalls #BeddedPack #DairyBarn #CowComfort #HeiferBarn #LivestockHousing #FarmManagement #DairyCows #agriculture https://autoventllc.com
