I like fresh herbs I'm not a picky eater otherwise but add in some fresh basil cilantro rosemary or thyme to a meal and it just makes a huge improvement to any recipe so I pay for this stuff at the grocery store and some of it is expensive like two to four bucks for a few stems so I got that thinking this spring hey I've got a backyard on the south side of my house I've got the Internet to read up on how to grow things I can do this myself and save some money and then the engineer and me realized hey have you made the garden automatically water itself that could save some work and if you collected all sorts of different data you could analyze that and get a sense of the health of the garden without any guesswork well here's a tip if you spend a lot of time and money complicating your garden with a bunch of sensors and electronics it ends up being more worth it just to buy fresh herbs from the grocery store my brother bought me an Arduino for Christmas last year saying it was right up my alley I guess he thought I could do with a few more ones and zeros in my life and being a cat owner myself.
I have to admit that it might
be nice to have something that does
what I tell it to well I went through
the tutorials and I honestly had a
lot of fun with this thing the gratification
that comes from combining a
working circuit and a working program is
a little bit addicting very much like golf
these moments of Eureka occur in between
long bouts of failure disappointment
and constant hazards but you get
something right just frequently enough
to keep you from giving up on it altogether
and I'm almost as nervous as they
come for an electrical hobbyist not to
mention as a gardener so if you're treating
this as a how-to guide don't sign
up for a booth at the farmers market
just yet in the interests of keeping
this video interesting I'm gonna try
and keep most of the technical jargon
and minutiae of the project out of
the narration and in the description below
if you have specific questions that
don't get addressed I'd love to answer
them in the comments let's jump right
into this building I'll go through all
the individual parts as if an Arduino
isn't complicated enough there are
a whole host of shields which are
just boards you can put on top of an Arduino
that add additional functionality
like Mario power-ups I'm using
this data logging shield which allows
you to save to an SD card now it is
completely possible to automatically water
a garden without any data login whatsoever
but then again none of this is
really necessary and I'm starting to realize
already that the plants themselves
are becoming secondary to the garden
data in my mind because if I don't
have a heavily instrumented garden I
might not be able to see how sunlight illuminance
correlates with soil temperature
or how soil moisture changes with
relative humidity and air temperature
or how far out of phase and soil
temperature in air temperature are from
one another and I certainly wouldn't
be able to take all that data and
make cool graphs and if I'm being honest
now I'm realizing this is truly what's
important to me I want to make cool
graphs this shield comes 95% assembled
but the headers are left off and
this is allegedly so you can choose which
headers you want but I have an inkling
that this is kind of like a mini gauntlet
for an electrical hobbyist like Adafruit
saying only after you can solder
on these headers will you be ready
for whatever it is you're planning to
do with this board and as someone who uses
their $10 soldering iron primarily for
burning their initials into the bottom
of wooden bowls this was a disaster
of a soldering job and I won't show
any close-ups of it because I'm embarrassed
but I somehow finished it without
ruining the board let's talk about
sensors I wanted a good mix of data
so I chose a suite of several different
kinds of sensors first and foremost
I wanted a soil moisture sensor because
I needed to know when to water the
garden now I did a lot of research on
soil moisture sensors and I won't bore
you with the details because there's
a lot of discussion out there so let
me save you some trouble in the simplest
way I can think of you get what you
pay for there's more on this in
the description below if you're
interested I bought a capacity of
soil moisture since from veget
Ronix and i couldn't resist getting
their soil temperature sensor while
I was at it these sensors are quite
a bit more expensive than the typical
stuff you can find on sparklin or
Adafruit but again you really get what
you pay for these are well-built
well calibrated and very simple to
use here I'm testing the soil
temperature sensor I also tested
the soil moisture sensor in lots
of different conditions including
dry air potting soil and this cup
of water apparently what's in this
cup is 98% water by volume which
is pretty good honestly as a civil
engineer that would have been
happy with anywhere between 80 and
120 my sunlight sensor is a cheap and
simple photoresistor it's resistance changes
based on intensity of light and you
can put together a simple circuit which
allows the arduino to read this as an
input actually made an attempt to calibrate
the sensor based on the known brightness
of this flashlight i have no idea
if it's even close to correct button
i have the code reporting this data
in lux which is the SI unit for illuminance
finally I got the sensor which
measures both air temperature and relative
humidity this is the only digital
sensor I'm using it's really easy
to use since all the electronics are
on board and the code is already written
so I just end up with nicely scaled
readings problem with a digital sensor
is that my multimeter can't talk to
it so if there's any need for troubleshooting
I don't really have a lot of
options luckily this one worked just
fine for the actual watering of the garden
I've got a cheapo solenoid valve from
Adafruit I built a little circuit with
a transistor which allows the Arduino
to switch the valve on right now I
have the code check the water level once
a day in the evening and switch on a
soaker hose for a set amount of time if
it's below a certain threshold from what
I've read it's actually better for the
plants and herbs especially to have some
cyclical nature to the wetness and dryness
of the soil rather than just being
constantly well watered this scheme
also reduces the duty cycle on the
valve and if a sensor goes bad there's a chance of flooding the yard since all these electronics are going to be sitting out in the Sun I'm building a crude version of a Stevenson screen which is really just a louvered box
that lets weather instruments be
out in the open without exposure
to direct sunlight or rain I'm
using the plywood dregs of my
scrap bin so this is LEED Silver accredited
to get the gold I think you have
to use pallet wood and have a Pinterest
account the enclosure goes together
with a tin soffit vent glue and finished
nails a nice coat of white latex
paint will hopefully help reflect the
Sun well it wouldn't be a hobbyist project
without at least one big gob of electrical
tape and some questionable troubleshooting
but I finally got this thing
working I've had it running for
just a few
days now and it's actually working
really well the garden is happily
watered with no intervention from
me even though I check on it now more
often than before it had the Gard Ueno
here's a quick look at some of the data
I'm collecting combining
microcontrollers and gardening is
a really popular idea I think that's because
Gardens have very simple inputs and
outputs that are easy to wrap your head
around soil plus water plus light equals
delicious herbs and vegetables I
guess people myself included see a notoriously
simple and relaxed hobby and can't
help but feel compelled to over complicate
it and there's a growing market of
products out there geared towards
quote unquote makers which are really
solutions looking for problems or at
the very least things which we'd like to
try and use but just for the sake of using
them and for me at least the Arduino
probably falls into that category
but just about anyone can connect
the dots between garden needs water
and I am NOT a responsible humanbeing who is capable of remembering to water a garden every day and realize
hey I can use technology to
overcome my personal shortcomings
and more than that I can bend
technology to my will and that
will feel good to my ego and my sense
of self-worth after all no one's hobby
is to buy an irrigation controller off
the shelf of a hardware store thanks for
watching and let me know what you think
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