Wireless Plant Soil Monitoring: The Beginning.

I saw a little probe for monitoring soil on eBay.. $1.69 and free shipping.. purchased! Okay.. its a lame little PCB with some electronics I won’t use but still, nifty. I didn’t have much on my plate today and I was pretty sore from a solid hike yesterday so I was riding the bench seat today. I built a little front end circuit mated to a little MCU built on a Jayson Tautic 8 pin dev board with a 12F1840. It dumps serial out to a $3 433Mhz transmitter when the soil is low on water (still need to write some sleep code).. on the other side the receiver and well I don’t know yet. Honestly I started with thinking about a XPORT but I haven’t made my mind up.

Work in progress.... watching dirt dry.
Work in progress…. watching dirt dry.

 

So, a funny side effect: My wife was frustrated that she couldn’t get our wireless Christmas lights to turn on. Heh, well “Ooops!”… shocker, I had to turn my circuit off. So next I’ll work on the receiver side. I’m thinking my poor plants need to text message me when they’re thirsty? I’ll drop code later when it’s more complete.

And yesterday! I hiked past this pretty awesome frozen water fall (and two others) on my way up to Lake Serene. Last year we got stopped by a nasty avalanche field.. this year is was just solid ice. Thankfully I had my Kahtoolas.

forwa

Author: Chas

I don't know why I blog, because? I have no agenda, just love electronics and want to share. I love to follow other experimenters/hardware hackers just to see what other people are working on. Shoot me a message if you blog.

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