SmartWatering – Arduino plant watering

SmartWatering

Particle Core based project in charge of taking care of my green plants

This readme is subject to evolve.

Basically, I am using 5 parts and a few meters of water hose

• [A I2C soil moisture sensor] (https://www.tindie.com/products/miceuz/i2c-soil-moisture-sensor/)
• A Particle Core
• [A water flow meter] (http://www.dx.com/p/hs01-high-precision-flow-meter-white-black-226937#.Vo2cj1JN8Vc)
• [An USB submersible water pump] (http://www.dx.com/p/at-usb-1020-usb-powered-pet-fish-tank-submersible-pump-black-dc-3-5-9v-337664#.Vo2ckFJN8Vc)
• An USB power switch (Mosfet, Relay, Integrated switch IC, …)

The program (at the time of writing, version is 1.0.0 ) does some kind of trivial task:

• 1. Initialize the hardware
• 2. Wait some time
• 3. Proceed to a moisture measurement
• 4. if moisture under threshold, goto 2), else goto 5)
• 5. Turn the pump ON, wait until the desired quantity of water has been watered AND check that timeout did not happen
• 6. Turn the pump OFF, goto 2)

Modifying the Particle

The water pump will not work with a voltage under 5V. In order to power it, I soldered a wire straight on the VUSB pin of the USB header. The following picture illustrates where to solder the wire on the former Arduino Nano. You can do the same with the Particle Core diode (black component between the USB header and the VIN pin).

Connecting everything

Actually the wiring is straightforward. Remember that on the Arduinos as well as on the Particle Core, you can not use any pin in interrupt mode. Here, I used D3 to count the pulses coming out the water flow meter. You will also notice the 2 10k pull-up resistors on the I2C bus. They are mandatory, do not forget them.

When the electric wiring is done, you can now assemble the parts along the water hose (5mm think, respective to the diameter of the Water pump and flow sensor). (Note, you can pick up some hose on Amazon like this one) .

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