We’ve seen a lot of clever irrigation devices for gardeners being made with the Pi, but PiPlanter is the most complete (and the best documented) system we’ve seen so far.
It does far more than simple irrigation. PiPlanter monitors the dryness off the clay of your plant pot; it outputs that data to the raspberry pi and raspberry pi give the signal to the relay, relay use to controls a pump to water the plants depending on that data, and outputs the data as a digital signal.
In this project, we will use Raspberry Pi, a small single-board computer as the ‘controller’ for this plant automation project.
So if we talk about the raspberry pi, the device contains the same advantages and opportunities as of ordinary computers which mean we can run the multiple programs from it. The only difference is that it’s smaller in size and allows to control various household appliances and devices.
Let’s get started
Collect Hardware
- Raspberry Pi (Any model) View on Amazon
- microSD card (8Gb recommended) View on Amazon
- 5volt relay
- Moisture sensor with a controller board View on Amazon
- Jumper wires View on Amazon
- 12volt water pump View on Amazon
Collect Software
Download install the Raspbian OS and connect putty or control it over the HDML display
- Raspbian (Download Now)
- Win32Disk imager( Download Now)
- SD Formater(Download Now)
- Putty (Download Now)
Step 1
Format the SD Card,
Install raspbian OS
Choose the Raspbian iso file and write it in MicroSD Card
Make the wiring
Water sensor – Insert the positive lead of the water sensor into pin 2 and the negative lead into pin 6. Insert the signal line (yellow) into pin 8.
Relay – Insert the positive lead of pin 7 into IN1 on the relay board. Also, connect pin 2 to VCC and pin 5 to GND on the relay board.
Pump – make a connection the pump to power and run a black ground wire between slots B and C of relay module 1 (this turns off the circuit that turns the pump on when RPi sends the LOW signal 0V to pin 1).
As long as you use the Raspberry Pi 3, this diagram should capture the correct GPIO. Another power source for RPi is not shown.
Run source Code
Open the Putty and run the python script, Download and copy the source from this repository
Download and install the necessary libraries
sudo python pip install
Locate the file directory and run the script by typing this command “sudo python auto_water”
It will start working just set the moisture sensor in the pot clay, and attach every things as I describe.
You may also like to read these awesome projects
How to Build Smart Garden with Raspberry Pi using a Moisture sensor