During the first year of Covid, I made a greenhouse. I made it partly because I feared the worst and partly because it’s better to keep busy than to fear something mostly out of my control. You can read about the build here: https://edwu91.wixsite.com/vegemountain/post/pandemic-hobby-gardening
The Greenhouse after construction
The greenhouse has now been through 1 year of Vancouver weather and it’s still standing so I’ll call this a win. We’re now in our second “lockdown” period in British Columbia and what better thing to do than to automate the greenhouse right? When I do end up going back to the office, it’d be nice to continue having the seedlings managed without human intervention. It’d be nice to have a garden full of vegetables this year for as long as possible.
The garden already has some seedlings courtesy of the automated watering electronic omnichannel moisture emitter (AWESOME)
My incentive to start the project was to impulse buy some controllers, sensors, and plumbing equipment which I thought could be useful for the project. After buying parts, I decided on a goal... This is not how I would typically start an engineering project nor recommend this method to anyone.
My plans was control the soil temperature and moisture level of the seedlings in the greenhouse with zones to grow a variety of plants at the same time from seed to seedling. Manual controls and data collection included just in case the automation fails.
Mundane tasks like making connectors and cables helps keep things slightly organized..
Tinkering and product creep kept this project evolving to the point where I now have an automating misting system in the greenhouse that monitors moisture level and temperature in the plant pots and automatically mists them when the moisture level is too low. A heated pad is there to elevate the soil temperature if it gets too cold. A bunch of data is also collected, stored and plotted because why not? There are seedling zones (not implemented yet as only one sensor and solenoid valve on at the moment) and why not add a livestream camera? Lots of feature creep and sleepless nights resulted in this. I’m happy to say that it was worth my time learning about sensors, new user interfaces, plumbing, web interfacing, and data management. The most frustrating part had to be soldering connectors together for a somewhat clean look.
AWESOME all set up and running. Still too many cables everywhere.
Next for this project will be to create a phone app so everything can be controlled on your phone instead of through a windows application. I already know how I want to lay out the interface so look out for an android app soon. Below is a snapshot of the user interface, with only one zone lit up at the moment. It’s measuring the temperature, pressure, humidity, and light level in the greenhouse as well as the soil moisture level of one of the seedling trays.
More information on the actual build, git hub repo, and a bill of materials will be made available eventually.
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