Working with Raspberry Pi for a weather station and a small irrigation system.
For a indoor vertical garden
Single-board computers are very wonderful inventions, Raspberry Pi Fundations is one of my favorites to work with. I chose the Raspberry Pi Zero W model for this project, because it is very small, I also picked up a Sense HAT (B).
Sense HAT comes with the SHTC3 a temperature & Humidity sensor. The advantage of using a HAT is that it comes with different sensors and I can test for several projects. Anyway, for the moment I’m only testing the SHTC3 sensor. Although, I want to use the light sensor to trigger a lightbulb specially designed for indoor plants.
The SHTC3 data:
Temperature & Humidity
Accuracy (humidity):±2% rH
Ranging(humidity): 0% ~ 100% rH
Accuracy(temperature): ±0.2°C
Ranging(temperature): -30 ~ 100°C
If you’re interested, the HAT also comes with the following onboard sensors:
ICM20948 (3-axis accelerometer, 3-axis gyroscope, and 3-axis magnetometer), detects movement, orientation, and magnetic
LPS22HB barometric pressure sensor, allows monitoring the environment
TCS34725 color sensor, identifies the color of nearby object
ADS1015 ADC, 4-ch 12-bit precision, AD expansion to support more external sensors
Plus comes with I2C control pins, for connecting other host boards like STM32.
When you are working with a “Hat” for a weather project, you need a GPIO extension from the board to the “Hat”, the reason is that the board heats will affect the sensor reading; if you choose to use Adafruit SHTC3, you don’t need it, because you’ll use cables connectors.
For now, mine looks like this:
I need to encase the “Hat” that will be attach to the base where the plants are. As I live in an apartment, the idea is to make a vertical garden on one wall of the family room.
The Raspberry Pi Zero will control the lighting and irrigation. The irrigation is based on a single motor, those that are used in aquariums.
I searched some ideas over the internet and the best design I found was this:
Please, let me know in the comments if you want to read about the Python programming that I’m using for this project.
Also, do you like indoor gardens? In my case, I want herbs, for example: sage, thyme, rosemary, marjoram, lavender, and oregano. Don’t you think is it ideal to cook with fresh herbs that you harvest? Plus all the benefits that come with green!
Leave a comment and let me know your ideas.
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