Balcony irrigation

A couple of years ago, I have installed the automated irrigation system in our apartment. After running this setup for an year, I have discovered some problems during the everyday operation:

  • due to the small capacity of the water tank, it was required to refill the tank frequently,
  • amount of water delivered to the plants was determined by time (averaged measured value I got with calibration) and was not accurate,
  • it was not possible to irrigate plants independently,
  • couple of times the whole water tank was used for single watering thanks to basic physics in action and lack of the valves.

In a meanwhile I have decided to automate the watering of the balcony plants as well, but also to fix the problems noticed in the first implementation. Continue reading “Balcony irrigation”

Loading

Automated irrigation

After successfully monitoring the plants water levels and needs for some period now, it was finally the time to automate the process of watering as well. The idea was to implement a simple drip watering system with one single water source. Each of the three existing plants would be irrigated proportionally, based on its demands. During the period of couple of weeks, all necessary components arrived and the system was ready to be built.

The main part of the system is a water pump. This is a small 300 l/h submergible electric pump. This was good choice because of its low flow and the fact it can be easily put inside the water tank in the corner of the room.

Water pump

Continue reading “Automated irrigation”

Loading

Homy and plants

After having all the light bulbs in the house under control, I couldn’t resist electrifying the rest of the household 🙂 I spent couple of days looking around the house, and finally found the next “thing” to experiment with. Couple of months ago my wife and me got a Dracaena tree. Since we had no experience in nursing the plants, we had some doubts about when and how often to water it. I decided to solve this problem in geeky engineering way.

After some online investigation on how to measure a “water level” for the plant, I came across some nice articles: How to make a cheap soil moisture sensor?Gypsum Blocks / Electrical ResistanceMoisture Sensor Prototype, … It was clear I would need to build a gypsum sensors myself, since it was cheaper and more fun. After quick visit to the nearby hobby shop, all necessary tools and materials were at the table: nails, gypsum, thick paper…

Continue reading “Homy and plants”

Loading