growbot-x

Python scripts for growbox monitoring, federation, and automation using the raspberry pi.

Hardware:

• Raspberry pi
• Internet connection
• AM2302, DHT22, or DHT11 temperature/humidity sensor
• MCP3008 A/D converter
• Capacitive soil moisture sensors (resistive sensors, while cheaper, corrode very quickly and are not suitable for this application)
• Pi Camera

Note: Due to the self-contained, modular nature of these scripts, you may choose to use only what sensors you need & their corresponding scripts.

If you have other hardware you would like to use, feel free to do so and help grow the project!

Hardware Setup:

The temperature/humidity sensors are very simple to wire up. Just connect their power and ground to the respective pins on the pi, and connect data to any pin, though 3 is the default here (this shows up as 2 in the config because it is 0 indexed).

The MCP3008 is a little trickier, I may add a diagram here at a later date. Wiring diagrams can also be easily found elsewhere.

The soil moisture sensors can be connected almost just like the temp/humidity sensors, except data will go to one of the channel pins on the MCP3008.

Software Dependecies:

• Python3
• Pip3
• Adafruit_DHT (requires pip)
• Spidev-py (requires pip)
• Mastodon.py (requires pip)

Getting Started:

After installing and setting up Raspbian on your pi (including network configuration and enabling SPI), install Python3, pip3, & depedencies (sudo pip3 install Adafruit_DHT spidev Mastodon.py). Make an account on any ActivityPub server which supports the MastodonAPI, (i.e. Pleroma, Mastodon, etc.) Next, copy conf.example (the example config) to conf.secret and then edit conf.secret by filling in the URL for the instance you chose as well as details about your hardware. Finally, simply run python3 generateSecrets.py.

In list form:

1. Install Raspbian on Pi
2. Connect Pi to the internet
3. Use sudo raspi-config to enable SPI
4. Install software dependencies sudo apt install python3 python3-pip
5. Install python dependencies sudo pip3 install Adafruit_DHT spidev Mastodon.py
6. Make a mastodon bot account
7. Copy conf.example to conf.secret cp conf.example conf.secret
8. Edit conf.secret
9. Run python3 generateSecrets.py

Usage:

To post all sensor readings, use python3 mastoPost.py -A, for more options, read python3 mastoPost.py -h Additionally, any script may be run individually i.e. python3 THModule.py. These outputs can be piped into mastoPost.py like so python3 THModule.py | python3 mastoPost.py. Automation of the scripts is as simple as setting up a cronjob.