The pi runs a reddit bot that reads the votes, and can switch on a pump to water. It also collects data about sunlight, moisture, temp and humidity to help inform the decision about watering. Despite many people's preconceptions about the goodness of the internet, I must admit that they do a wonderful job caring for my plant!
website: http://www.takecareofmyplant.com
subreddit w/ voting: http://old.reddit.com/r/takecareofmyplant
Maybe I should create a subreddit where people can control a bot that has access to my bank accounts so they can manage my finances, invest some, etc. ;-)
Set up a system like that wrong, and it doesn't matter how smart the crowd is, you're going to lose all your money. It would be interesting to play with the parameters of the game and see how results changed. (how often trades are made, max portfolio % per trade, voting mechanics, etc.)
Raspberry pi is automatically uploading video of each watering to YouTube (https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCtl442fLi6KAOowkw_w83rA/vid...) and informing me with summary (incl. watering duration, soil moisture level, temperature, humidity, light level etc.).
Not that I care that much about the plant but automating it has been fun. It's been on auto pilot now for a couple of months now and the plant from the looks of it seams to be happy.
Availability of water level at source is checked by a non-contact liquid level sensor.
Triggers for watering plant are defined as follows: 1. There is water in tank / source (checked by non-contact liquid level sensor) 2. Soil moisture level is below certain threshold (measured by 2 soil moisture capacity sensors embedded in the plant) 3. Watering duration is determined by current soil moisture level; Python script activates relay to run the pump for the right duration. 4. Same python script also: - activates camera to record watering (+2s buffer to have all on the video) via usb cam connected to the pi (leveraging opencv lib) - uploads recorded video automatically to youtube channel (if pi has internet connection) - summarizes watering event and sends me notification with link to the recording and other helpful stats (temp, humidity, moisture level etc.) - saves all metrics to sqllite db for future reference
Key parts I ended up using for the project: 1. Water pump: https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B01LWXV7DE/ref=ppx_yo_dt_b...
2. Non-contact Liquid Level Sensor -XKC-Y25-NPN: https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B07D3246BH/ref=ppx_yo_dt_b...
3. Gikfun Capacitive Soil Moisture Sensor: https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B07H3P1NRM/ref=ppx_yo_dt_b...
4. Relay: https://www.amazon.com/KeeYees-Channel-Indicator-Arduino-Ras... (though I just bought my when visiting Fry's)
Primary motivation to do the project was so that wife can have pice of mind knowing plants are taken care of while we are away on longer trips.
Hope this helps.
Out of curiosity, how did you come up with this idea?
If you have interest in doing something similar, come check out the subreddit and feel free to DM me on reddit or twitter. Always happy to talk about plants and automation
my pihole also blackholes them
I interfaced a toy excavator remote with an Arduino and also put a small Cozmo robot online from time to time. Some people took their robots outside even :)
