Equipment Database & Setup Builder Guide

Choosing the right equipment is one of the most important decisions you will make as an indoor grower. Too little light and your plants underperform; too much ventilation for a small tent wastes money; wrong nutrient ratios cause deficiencies. GrowVPD Pro's Equipment tab brings together a product database, an equipment advisor, and a setup builder, and the Calculator tab adds calculators for nutrients, soil mixes, ventilation and yield, to help you plan and optimize your grow space.

The Equipment Database

GrowVPD Pro includes a curated database of 223 products from 46 brands, covering everything from LED lights to complete ventilation kits. This is not a generic product catalog — each entry carries a short summary of the technical data that actually matters for growing.

What Is Included

• LED grow lights — wattage, PPE (photon efficacy in μmol/J), PPFD, coverage area, diodes and spectrum, dimming
• Grow tents — dimensions, pole size, reflective lining
• Ventilation — exhaust fans (duct size, airflow, speed control), carbon filters (duct size, airflow, carbon type), circulation fans
• Humidifiers and dehumidifiers
• Other gear — controllers (e.g. AC Infinity, Trolmaster), self-watering and drip systems, pH and EC meters, environment monitors, fabric pots, trellis nets

Search and Filter

You can browse the database by category or search by brand name, product name, or specification:

• Brand — Mars Hydro, Spider Farmer, AC Infinity, Lumatek, Gavita, SANlight, and 40 more
• Category — lights (main or supplemental), tents, exhaust fans, carbon filters, circulation fans, humidifiers, dehumidifiers, other
• Tent size and budget — the Equipment Advisor asks for your tent size and budget and recommends products that fit (see Setup Builder below)

Tip: When comparing LED lights, focus on PPE (μmol/J) rather than wattage. A light with 2.7 μmol/J efficiency converts more electricity into usable plant light than one at 2.0 μmol/J. A 240W light at 2.7 PPE outperforms a 320W light at 2.0 PPE while using less power and producing less heat.

Nutrient Calculator

The built-in nutrient calculator (in the Calculator tab) takes the guesswork out of mixing your feed solution. It supports 287 nutrient products from 18 brands, including:

• BioBizz — Bio-Grow, Bio-Bloom, Top-Max, Root-Juice, etc.
• Canna — Terra Vega/Flores, Coco A/B, Cannazym, PK 13/14, etc.
• Plagron — Alga Grow/Bloom, Terra Grow/Bloom, Green Sensation, etc.
• Advanced Nutrients — pH Perfect Grow/Micro/Bloom, Big Bud, Overdrive, etc.
• Hesi — TNT Complex, Bloom Complex, Phosphorus Plus, etc.
• Atami — Bloombastic, Rootbastic, ATA series, etc.
• And 12 more — Athena, B'cuzz, BioTabs, Emerald Harvest, FoxFarm, General Organics, Grotek, House & Garden, Mills, Remo, Shogun and Terra Aquatica

How to Use It

1. Select the nutrients you are using from the database
2. Enter your water volume (liters or gallons)
3. Choose your current growth stage (the calculator adjusts recommended concentrations)
4. The app calculates the exact ml of each nutrient to add to your reservoir

The calculator starts from the dose range each manufacturer gives for the product and scales every product by the same factor for the stage you pick — plain water for germination, about a quarter strength for seedlings, rising through veg and flower, and easing off again in late flower.

Substrate Mixer

If you mix your own growing medium, the substrate mixer (the Soil Mix Calculator in the Calculator tab) helps you create and save custom recipes. Define the components (soil, coco coir, perlite, vermiculite, compost, worm castings), set the ratio for each, and save the recipe. The mixer calculates the actual volume of each component needed based on your total target volume.

Saved recipes are available whenever you create a new grow in the diary, so you can record exactly which substrate mix you used. Over multiple grows, you will see which mix produced the best results for each variety.

Ventilation Calculator

Proper air exchange is critical for temperature control, humidity management, and CO2 replenishment. The ventilation calculator (the CFM Calculator in the Calculator tab) helps you size your exhaust system correctly.

Input Your Tent Dimensions

Enter the length, width, and height of your tent. The calculator computes the volume in cubic feet and determines the base CFM (cubic feet per minute) needed for adequate air exchange.

Adjustment Factors

The calculator applies correction factors based on your setup:

• Carbon filter — reduces effective CFM by approximately 25% (the calculator adds this buffer)
• Ducting — ducting adds resistance; the calculator adds 15% when you tick it
• Light heat output — based on the wattage of your light (entered manually); every 200 W above 200 W adds 20%

The result is a recommended minimum CFM rating for your inline fan (also shown in m³/h). The calculator then suggests a fan size (4, 6, 8 or 10 inch).

Tip: Always size your fan one step up from the minimum recommendation. A 6-inch fan running at 60% speed is quieter and more controllable than a 4-inch fan screaming at 100%. The extra headroom also means your fan can handle the additional static pressure from a carbon filter without struggling.

Setup Builder

Two tools in the Equipment tab help you design a complete grow space from scratch: the Equipment Advisor recommends gear, and the Setup Builder checks a setup you put together. They are especially useful for first-time growers or anyone building a new tent. The advisor works like this:

1. Select tent size — choose from standard sizes (60x60, 80x80, 100x100, 120x120 cm, etc.) or enter custom dimensions
2. Describe your grow — what the tent is for (full cycle, clones, veg only, flower only or drying), your experience, goal, plant type and count, climate, noise sensitivity and budget
3. Recommendations — the app suggests lights, ventilation and other gear from the database for each category, with an estimated light wattage and exhaust airflow for your tent and a setup score

In the Setup Builder you pick one product per category yourself. The app scores the setup for compatibility, coverage and efficiency, lists its strengths, weaknesses and tips (for example a missing exhaust fan or a low-efficiency light), and lets you save it under a name and load it again later.

Equipment Profiles

Equipment profiles (a Pro feature) let you save your entire tent setup — lights, fans, filter, humidifier and dehumidifier, pots, and medium — as a reusable configuration. This is useful when you:

• Run multiple tents — each tent has its own profile, so you can record which equipment is in which tent
• Switch between grows — when starting a new grow, select the profile and all equipment info is pre-filled in your diary
• Upgrade equipment — save the new setup as a new profile and keep the old one for reference

Equipment profiles are shared between the diary and the Automation tab. When you create a tent with its equipment in the Automation tab for smart device management, it is saved as an equipment profile, which you can load when you set up a grow in the diary.

Yield Estimator

The yield estimator (in the Calculator tab) provides a rough prediction of what you might harvest, based on several factors:

• Light wattage and type — the primary driver of yield potential
• Grow area — available canopy area (and the plant count, for a per-plant figure)
• Growing method — SOG, ScrOG, mainlining, topping, LST, natural growth (training methods generally increase yield per area), plus the substrate and whether you add CO₂
• Experience level — the estimator adjusts expectations for beginner, intermediate, and advanced growers

The output is a grams-per-watt estimate and a total yield range, per plant and per m². For a modern LED setup, the estimator starts from about 0.5 g/W for a beginner, 0.8 g/W at intermediate level and 1.2 g/W for an experienced grower, before adjusting for substrate, training and CO₂.

Keep in mind: Yield estimates are inherently rough. Genetics, VPD control, nutrient management, training technique, and countless other factors affect the final number. Use the estimator as a general benchmark, not a guarantee. The most accurate predictor of your yield is your own grow diary data from past harvests of the same variety.