Garden Watering

Automatic plant watering project using Arduino.

Installation

Build the sketch with Arduino IDE and upload to Arduino Nano.

Usage

Connect power to the device. Submerge the pump into water and connect hoses for watering. Place humidity sensors into soil.

When connected to computer over USB-C, the device opens a 9600 baud serial connection, and handles these commands:

• /s show current status: date, time, humidity and settings
• /h show command help
• /t HHMMSS set new time, e.g. /t 120403 for 12:04:03
• /d YYMMDD set new date, e.g. /d 240815 for 2024-08-15
• /w W set weekday, e.g. /w 4 for Thursday
• /a HHMM HHMM set watering times, e.g. /a 1015 1830 to water at 10:15 and 18:30
  • watering times between 12:00 and 15:00 will be rejected
• /b TT set humidity treshold to skip watering, e.g. /b 60 to not water if average soil humidity is bigger than 60%
• /c S set watering time duration in seconds
• /l print recent log in a machine and human-readable format

Each command ends with a new line character.

Roadmap

• Build and upload the code to Arduino
• Connect the real-time clock
• Parse commands sent on the serial
• Update the real-time clock from commands
• Save configuration to external memory
• Measure humidity with sensors
• Detect pump running dry
  • Measure the current
• Implement the watering algorithm
• Log data into external memory:
  • Watering times
  • Pump running without water
  • Humidity throughout the day
• Process log data
  • Graph time history
  • Publish online