Many of us have tried to plant a garden in one form or another. A good percentage of those people — including myself at times — end up killing their plants due to over or under-watering. Civil engineer Grady Hillhouse, however, decided to take complete control of his garden with a custom Arduino-based watering system.
Grady’s original inspiration for this garden was that while fresh herbs are good, they can be expensive. Having a southern-facing backyard, a garden seemed like an excellent solution. He also owned an Arduino, so building this automatic system seemed only natural.
As with many projects like this, it ended up being more work than just buying herbs, and he still checks on the garden quite a bit. He admits in the video below that “none of this is really necessary.” I’d agree, although it might not be necessary, we agree that automating your garden is pretty awesome.
Grady also provided plenty of pictures of his creation in this imgur set, many of which are seen below. The circuit diagram, which provides a transistor for switching the water off and on, as well as several sensors, could be a good reference for anyone considering building his or her own!
4 thoughts on “Video Walkthrough: Automatic Garden Watering and Data Logging with Arduino”
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If this could be modified to include (plus calibration) for electrical conductivity, which is critical for understanding salts and how to amend the soil, he is really onto something that could be scaled up and compete within large agricultural industry. Multiple sensors, simple interface. These sort of things could help in California, for sure, or anywhere conservation of water is necessary.
Hey Jeremy thanks for featuring my project on Make. Next time shoot me an email first! I had to post a comment on my video asking where all the traffic was coming from.
For anyone interested in the minutia of the project, I just finished a repository on GitHub, which includes the code, wiring diagram, and parts list. You can find it here: https://github.com/gradyh/GradyHillhouseGarduino/wiki
Very nice! Mel at catesgarden