This is a project I'm just starting. I have a plant that I've managed to keep alive for about 15 years that I keep in the office. I usually go away to Australia at Christmas to see my family for about 4 weeks and during this time I have to get someone to water the plant.
Now this enters an element of human fallibility into the equation which I'm not entirely happy about. Usually by the time I get back the plant is on its last legs and there's been more than a few close shaves.
So I'm going to try and make an automated system that will water the plant when I'm not there.
For this I'm going to use an Arduino micro controller (similar to the Makey Makey but more functionality) the reason i'm choosing this is mainly because the programming language is based on C and that's very similar to the C# that I've been learning to write games in Unity.
There are a couple of things which I want this project to achieve:
- Be self sufficient for at least 8 weeks.
- Only water the plant when the soil needs it, rather that on a timer.
- Use solar panels to re-charge the battery.
- Use a syphon to top up the water reservoir.
- Alert me via twitter/email if there is a problem.