Plant Project
Oct 3nd, 2022
I wanted to set up a system to automatically water plants.
With winter coming on, and while I have grown plants outside, I also live in an apartment where we dont have a water hose hookup outside, and inevitably I would forget to water the plants.
Grow Light
Along with automatically watering plants I wanted to have a grow light turn on and off.
I wanted to keep the plants in a closet so that way they would stay out of the way but also so our cat wouldnt mess with the plant.
Water Container
Title description, Sep 2, 2017
I reused an empty tide pods container to hold the water for the plants.
The pump I utilized was a small one I got from a waterfall item from Dollar Tree.
The pump had a 3/8in diameter hose on it. I went to Lowes and got the white plastic hose adapter to reduce it down to 1/4in that way it would hook up to the water drippers I had also got from Lowes.
The pump was designed to pump in the water but the wires needed waterproofing.
I utilized CAT-5 pair of wire for the power, but on the connection point I had soldered to the pump wires, I heat shrinked the connections.
Then I added a larger piece of heatshrink with hot glue in it to also provide more waterproofing.
Controlling the grow lamp
Utilizing a remote controlled power outlet, opening the remote revealed two buttons with a common line between the two.
Whenever the blue wire or the blue and white wire was connected to the green it would activate its perspective switch.
Utilizing relays and an arduino a simple 5 volt signal to either relay would turn and off the outlet for the grow light.
Controlling the grow lamp
The reason why I utilized the relays was the remote ran off of 12 volts to power the remote. So a simple circuit to trigger the switches would work.
Lamp outlet
Utilizing an LED grow bulb I bought from Lowes in a clamp work light I plugged it into the remote controlled outlet.
Circuitry
Utilizing an arduino Uno I first designed the program.
I wanted the end design to be operated off the Arduino nano also shown on the bread board.
The third relay worked to supply power to the water pump because an Arduino does not supply enough power to operate a pump.
Pump Power
I used a AA battery pack which supplies 6 volts to power the water pump.
Slight Growing
Oct 4th, 2022
The Cilantro that I had started in a paper towel has started to grow.
Yep, thats water
Oct 4th, 2022
Im not sure why, if the Tide pods container leaked or pumped too much water, but there was a decent amount of water in the incase of spills container.
However, for whatever reason, that hasnt happened since then.
More growth
Oct 9th, 2022
More growth, and if notice the light is a different shade, when this was taken the grow light had turned off.
The grow light is programmed to turned on for 12 hours and then turn off for 12 hours.
Plant Growth
Oct 19th, 2022
At this point I decided to make the project a little more permanent.
Circuit Design
Oct 19th, 2022
I used a prototype board that is solderable that is laid out like a bread board.
I used the Arduino Nano and the red and white wires on the far side is the power going to the VIN and the ground.
I then used the white, red, and black wire connectors to connect the board to the relays.
Circuit Design
Oct 19th, 2022
The wire connectors went to the relays I mounted to the outside of the case.
I also installed a 9v battery mount, but I didnt have any 9 volt batteries that were charged so I stuck with the 4 AA batteries.
Battery Holders
Oct 19th, 2022
I also installed a 9v battery mount, but I didnt have any 9 volt batteries that were charged so I stuck with the 4 AA batteries.
I also installed a button to manually trigger the pump relay incase I felt the plant needed more water.
Plant workplace
Oct 19th, 2022
I placed the plant and the water jug back in the incase of spills container and placed it on a shelf.