Well after many months in the lab toiling away with a soldering iron and C compiler I have finally gotten the first version of my Arduino project done! OK really It just took months to get the time to finish the project but that doesn't sound as impressive really.. This is my first Arduino project and first really large electronics project so mistakes were made but overall I'm really happy that it all works!
I really started the project way back in February of last year and a little over a week ago I planted the GardenDroids first crop, Spinach. I mostly chose spinach because I believe it will grow fairly well in the 75 degree room upstairs where the Droid has been parked as well as its ability to grow in partial sun which I am assuming is about what the LED lighting will produce.. tho I may be mistaking on that. We will see!
So what is a mini-greenhouse? Well in one sentence it's an electronically maintained greenhouse which can be maintained indoors and monitored from your web browser.
This is my mini-greenhouse which I am calling The Garden Droid (you know like garden gnome?)
What you see above is my Garden Droid which boasts a whopping 3 sq. ft. of well lit gardening space, soil moisture monitoring, temperature logging, LED grow lights and wireless transmission of data to my computer. Coming soon it will also be self watering, monitor humidity and ambient light as well as have an upgraded wireless protocol so it can transmit small pictures of the plant growth and support multiple Droids.
Has I mentioned the website where I can monitor everything going on? Below is a quick snap of the web application which is used to monitor not just the Garden Droid plants but, your whole garden.
The whole project is open source and built on free software with open hardware that anyone can buy and build. I will be trickling out technical details and how to's in the following weeks for anyone interested and heck if my plants grow well I might even sell kits but, first let's see if I can get spinach to grow.
Part of my motivation for this project was to be able to grow salads year round but here in FL most of the summer is not kind to regular spinach and other leafy greens, its just too darn hot and all my efforts have been a failure. I figured that since I am keeping my house artificially cool all summer and the temps would be great for growing greens, why not give it ago? I plan to eventually get this little box powered by a solar panel collecting dust int he garage as well then there will be a net gain of energy savings though just growing at home saves oil I would think.
Anyway I am really excited about version 1 coming together and I am looking forward to the next version with the enhanced capabilities. To check out the code jump over to my GitHub where you can see the code for the Arduino, the data logging deamon and the full web app. I will be posting the real technical details just as soon as I can throw together some schematics and I'll keep you posted on the plants progress as well.
