Hey everyone new the page and I’m afraid a bit of a newb when it comes to all this stuff.
I’ve been looking for an automated watering system for a few house plants that are often left unattended for days on end. I stumbled upon the grow kit available on here. I’m hoping you guys can give me a few pointers on what I need to buy and how to set it up.
My plan is to have an elevated reservoir full of nutrient solution that will have an electronically controlled 3 way valve that (hopefully) the board will open as and when one(or 2 or 3) of the 3 plants needs water for an alloted amount of time. I would prefer to avoid pumps to keep noise to a minimum.
So other than what comes with the kit I guess I’ll need a valve which hopefully is also available from pimoroni, but is there anything else I’m not aware of? Can I add more sensors to the same board or would I need to get multiple kits? 3 would do for now tbf.
As stated above I have zero experience with raspberry pi, programming or whatever it is that I’m trying to do, so will I be able to get this thing running myself? I have a reasonable amount of common sense and some basic understanding of electronics.
Very much looking forward to learning something new and seeing my plants thrive.
Just found this link 😀 very useful but is there a way I can replace the pump with valves instead? Or can anyone tell me how noisy the pumps are? Would they be annoying if you where trying sleep/watch tv/read near them for instance.
i have a few pumps ,just started to setup last night so have run a pump yet .but i cant imagin they will be very loud ,I will test one and let you know in an hr. or so
Thanks mate, I have very sensitive ears so I often get annoyed by high frequency sounds like transformers etc.
First time hooking it up ,so of course its not going good,and not having any soil isnt helping ,and the snow on the ground outside is making it hard to get some ,lol. did notice an option in the sample code to reduce the pump speed by 50% ,makes me think the pump loudness woudn’t/shouldn’t be an issue
got it working,pump never ran yet though ,but as I sat admiring my work[lol] it came to me that the Pump sits in the water and pumps water in through the bottom ,so you/we should hear nothing (
Those are both good points hopefully they should be tolerable. One other issue I’ve thought about is that my reservoir will have to be elevated so with there will be a siphon effect, so I think I need to figure out a way to use valves and gravity.
yeah, I guess it depends on your needs and your setup , Good luck with your valves and gravity :) For me its just a project ,I actually bought the chilli kit for my Adult Daughter and she will just be useing the little clay pots and same style plastic containers as shown in link ,for starters …Auto-Watering with Grow