The Smart Garden

Video below shows the components operating in unison. First I show the temp sensor data being reported to the serial monitor in the Arduino IDE, then I show the heat cable being triggered on by a reduction in temperature, which I triggered by putting the temp sensor in ice water.

I believe my concept (to only heat and cool the root zone of the plant), will yield great results. I call the concept "Root Zone Optimization". I started calculating how much power The Smart Garden will likely consume over the growing season. Below is a graphic that shows average temperature data in my area. I am using this to chart out the power consumption that can be expected for each tomato plant.

I wanted to get all the electrical equipment on The Smart Garden as consolidated as possible. I decided to use the side panel of an old desktop computer.

The video below shows the first successful run of the water pump. I am using a peristaltic pump from Adafruit. I am using this pump for precision. The pump is 12V DC, which will be the voltage of all the relay powered parts.

One of the most labor intensive aspects of growing tomatoes in Illinois is that you need to germinate the plant inside your home and then transplant the tomato plant to your garden when it is warm enough outside. This seemed like a lot of unnecessary work for me. With the Smart Garden's heating coils, I hope I will be able to germinate the seed outside in the planter without the labor of transplanting. I decided to wrap my planter in the heating coil used to heat bathroom floors.

http://www.oemheaters.com/p-6109-12v-dc-heat-cable-5-wattsfoot.aspx

Although I reference The Smart Garden as an Arduino controlled project, the truth is that I still have not decided which development board I am going to use. I am still leaning towards the Arduino because I spent a lot of time working on code in the Arduino IDE to control the plant robotics, but the Edison and Pi are just so intriguing.

When I first started this project, I did not have much of an understanding of electrical engineering. The picture below is what I call my "Arduino Bone Yard", It is my collection of fried Arduinos and a 16 channel relay board from Sainsmart.