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To prevent my plants in the greenhouse from drying out due to forgetful watering, I considered building a solar powered watering system. Two years of on and off (mostly off) work have yielded the following system.
The system uses an alarm clock to signal the control box when to water. This lets me water once a day, prefereably early morning to stop the roots sitting in water all night (when absorbtion of water is supposed to be less). I butchered a cheap solar powered alarm clock from Maplin to achieve this.
A look inside the control box shows pumps on the base (top of photo) and control electronics in the lid (bottom of photo) so they dont get wet in case of a leak.
The main system components are generic automotive windscreen washer pumps (one per plant), a 6V SLA battery, a BQ2031 battery charger evaluation board and a custome made control board built from various passives, a 555 timer and some 4000 series CMOS logic. Link to control circuit below.
Solar panel was sourced from eBay and is Volkswagen branded - designed for trickle charging car batteries through the fag lighter socket. Water comes from the 200 litre water butt by the greenhouse.
This system is still to be installed, I've got that scheduled in for next weekend. I'm going to add soil moisture sensors at some point, one per plant. Possibly some solenoid valves if I have problems with siphoning.
Registered Member #160
Joined: Mon Feb 13 2006, 02:07AM
Location: Melbourne, Australia
Posts: 938
Nice work!! I thought of doing the same for my greenhouse but nothing so complex. I was going to use an inline timer tap to do the watering. Well done though!
Registered Member #505
Joined: Sun Nov 19 2006, 06:42PM
Location: Yorkshire!
Posts: 329
Cheers :)
I did consider an ATmega16 and an RTC but I'm not current on micros at the moment and the learning curve would have been too steep to enable me to get this projet completed for this years growing season. Logic and a 555 enabled me to lash it up quicker and design circuits when stuck in boring meetings.
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Automatic Solar Powered Plant Watering System
No solar yet though.