speakeasy

Hi,

My banana hobby first started with one plant, then as of yesterday moved up to three, and has no sign of stopping soon (I'm sure many of you are in way deeper). As much fun as it is to care for my plants, I'm worried I may miss some required action due to work, vacation or other activities.

I've begun work on an automation solution to take care of some of the tasks involved in caring for banana plants.

Things implemented so far:

*Read Temperature
*Read Humidity
*Read Soil Moisture

Things to be implemented in the near future:

*Automated watering based on dryness of soil
*Automated watering based on schedule
*Toggle grow lights on/off

Things to be implemented in the far off future:

*Post status to internet
*Mobile app

What other functions do you think may be useful?

speakeasy

Hi, just an update, I've gotten it to post data, for anyone curious to take a look at the conditions of my little plant, you can have a look here.

geissene

Interesting idea, the field charts didn't plot in my browser (chrome).

SO i assume you have some kind of microship like a raspberry pi that is programmed to read sensors and drive a small watering pump / LED light?


Erik G

speakeasy

Hi, thanks for your interest!

Would you mind trying the link again? Not much I can do on my end as I'm only passing data through Thingspeak's API, but for what it's worth I can view the charts on chrome browser on my phone so perhaps it was just a one time hiccup?

Yes, I'm using an ESP8266 to control various sensors, a water pump, and grow lights. The water pump and grow lights are only being simulated at the moment, as I'll be moving soon and need to pack up the whole operation eventually, but output from the controller looks good based on what I'm reading from the charts. Raspberry Pi is a bit overkill/overpriced for the job, but if I ever find a need for video out or 1ghz of processing power I'd definitely entertain the idea.

geissene

Hi there

The pics are loading now: temp, humidity, dryness, and light output have real data. A video pic would be nice if you worried about leaf growth while you are away (ie spotted leaves).

I agree the ESP is cheaper than the pi by atleast 5X. I've worked with the Atmel AVRs so I'd probably have used them just because of my lack of willingness to learn anything EE related.

The only worry I'd have is that the automatic watering wouldn't shut off if something went crazy. So hopefully that isn't connected into your house water supply. Otherwise, any failure would bring a flood....

I've always wanted to build a sump pump monitor with data logging for my basement but never had the time. I guess that is because I'm maintaining 10+ banana plants around my house.. .ahahaha

Erik G
North Wales, PA

speakeasy

I think in the future I'd like to add a camera, if only for making a timelapse haha.

The Reservoir status and pump status are just simulated at the moment (the data output is just binary, hence the value of 0 most of the time), but from the tests I've run it's operating properly. Yeah, I don't have it hooked up to the plumbing grid precisely for the reason you mentioned. Right now it's just a bucket from the local home improvement store, haha, but I don't have that out since my landlord is showing the place to prospective buyers and I don't want it getting accidentally kicked over. Once I've settled in my new place I will set it up properly. Still trying to figure out the precise dryness value I should set the pump to come on at, so I'll be experimenting with that for a little while longer.

The ESP8266 has been a godsend. I do have some Atmel/arduino based boards laying around, but they're in this weird position where they're overkill for some projects where an Attiny chip would suffice, but not as capable as an ESP8266 which is still quite cheap.

10+ is a lot! Hopefully I'll get there someday.

cincinnana

Fellas ....get out the hose and water the plants when they need it. LOL

Although most of my plants are on a drip system....thinking about wifi next year for more data collection too.

__________________