Planet Arduino

Many plants are notorious for how picky they are about their environmental conditions. Having the wrong temperature, humidity, soil type, and even elevation can produce devastating effects. But none are perhaps as important and overlooked as water/soil pH, which is a measure of how acidic and/or alkaline the growing medium is. In hydroponics, maintaining optimal growing conditions is how high yields can be ensured without becoming too wasteful. Janet N on Hackster had the idea of combining the powers of embedded machine learning to let her know when the water had become unacceptable for her plants. 

The device uses an Arduino Nano 33 BLE Sense to continuously monitor the pH of the hydroponics water supply with a simple probe. This data was initially loaded into Edge Impulse’s Studio where it was split into features and then sent to both a Keras classification model and an anomaly detection model for training. After she was satisfied with the performance of both, they were deployed back onto the Arduino.

As the system checks the pH of the water, it aggregates the data and places it into a buffer for classification. If the value is higher than 7, the soil is too basic, and a yellow LED is turned on. If the soil is too acidic (below 4), a red LED is activated. And finally, a green LED lights up when the optimal pH of around 5 has been reached. 

You can read more about the process of creating this project here on Hackster.io.

The post Monitor the pH levels of a hydroponic plant’s water supply with Arduino and tinyML appeared first on Arduino Blog.

Hydroponics seems like a great way to get fresh vegetables at a cheap price, but as Scott Paterson and Max Knight found out, doing this type of gardening well can take a lot of work. To help take the guesswork and hassle out of the process, the duo has created HydroBot — an automated garden minder that uses an Arduino Leonardo along with a Raspberry Pi Zero for control.

HydroBot allows you to remotely monitor your setup, and automate tasks using wireless switching for lights and fans, as well as two pumps built into the apparatus’ housing to add nutrients to your grow-water. 

The device is currently available on Kickstarter, and is also open source project, so you’ll be able to fix any bugs or even modify its behavior as needed!

If you love electronics as well as plants, what better way to combine the two than with a smart hydroponic system? Students at the Juan de Lanuza School decided to do just that, creating a portable hydroponic assembly that’s automatically controlled with the help of an Arduino Mega.

The system uses six lengths of PVC pipe to house plants and pass a nutrient rich liquid solution through their roots. The control assembly measures elements such as temperature, humidity, and pH, then adjusts the lighting, water pump, and nutrient feeder to accommodate for conditions. 

The device transmits data to ThinkSpeak for human monitoring, and also features a smartphone app for visualization. Build details are available here in English, or you can see a video of the setup in Spanish below.

You likely know that growing plants via hydroponics involves some sort of water and fertilizer solution. Perhaps, however, you don’t realize that these plants need to be removed from the water occasionally in order to air out the roots. Normally, this means that the water is raised and lowered.

Peter Fröhlich, though, decided to go a different route, and came up with a device to physically raise and lower the plants using a large wheel, resembling a sort of Ferris wheel for plants!

The frame itself is a plastic bin he purchased at a local hardware store, while the wheel and its arms were made with components lying around his lab and other laser-cut parts. To make this interesting setup turn, he used a stepper motor from an old printer, controlled by an Arduino and stepper driver.

Want to grow your own salad right inside your home? You can find more details of this fascinating build in Fröhlich’s project write-up and on Hackaday here.

Did you know that if you take a head of romaine lettuce and eat all but the bottom, then place it in a bowl of water, it will regrow? This fun fact actually inspired Instructables user Evandromiami to develop a deep water culture hydroponic system that would optimize the process for him.

The lettuce is grown on top of a five-gallon plastic bucket filled with water under full spectrum lights, while an Arduino 101 monitors the light, humidity, temperature, water, and pH levels measured by a set of sensors. The system is controlled over Bluetooth, which enables the Maker to adjust settings and receive notifications on an LCD screen. All the electronics, including the Curie-based board, are tucked away inside a power strip and the entire hydroponic farm lives inside an A/C closet. 

The Arduino 101-driven project continues to be a work in progress, but Evandromiami has already begun to expand into other veggies like tomatoes. Ready to get into the world of hydroponics? Check out the Maker’s entire write-up here.