Talking Plants
House plants are fairly self-sufficient, but they do need certain care from people to survive. With a few Arduino sensors and a little programming, you can take the guesswork out of watering your plants.
Automated plant watering with Arduino
Lead Image © Richard Laschon, 123RF.com
House plants can provide a little corner of peace and tranquility and give a living space a more cheerful feel. However, after plants are taken from their natural environment, they need certain help to be able to survive and stay healthy: watering, light, nutrients, and so on.
With the goal of keeping your plants from dying because of neglect or simply because you forgot to water them, I'm going to focus in this article on using Arduino to design systems that allow you to understand better what your plants feel and, at the same time, make gardening a simpler task.
Controlling the Timing: RTC
Getting your Arduino to water the plants on time will require some attention to a very important programming topic: time control. With these skills, you won't be able to travel to the past in a DeLorean, but you will be able to control which day and at which time a specific action will be carried out. This setup will allow you to establish a specific schedule for watering your garden.
[...]
Use Express-Checkout link below to read the full article (PDF).
Buy this article as PDF
Express-Checkout as PDF
Pages: 6
Price $2.95
(incl. VAT)
(incl. VAT)
Buy Raspberry Pi Geek
TABLET & SMARTPHONE APPS
US / Canada
UK / Australia
Related content
-
Build a WiFi-enabled remote temperature sensor with Arduino Yún
Arduino's new Yún is a complete computer-on-a-chip, with WiFi access and a working version of Linux. We show you how to use Yún to manage a remote temperature sensor.
-
Building a Raspberry Pi greenhouse
A greenhouse environment has to be just right. The temperature can't climb too high or sink too low, and the plants need water. Why not put your Raspberry Pi to work as the gardener?
-
Capture temperature data with the ESP8266 and the LM75 Sensor
We use the ESP8266 chip which gathers temperature data from a sensor and then forwards it via REST to a Raspberry Pi, where it's stored in a database.
-
A new way of no-solder prototyping
The Grove system's standardized connector and multitude of devices allow quick and easy project prototyping with your favorite small-board computers.
-
Analyzing sensor readings with an XBee wireless connection
XBee modules let you take multiple sensors and build relatively uncomplicated wireless networks that a Raspberry Pi can then connect together.
