Pi Plant

• A python written plant irrigation system.
• Uses both a 5V pump and a moisture sensor.
• Incorporates pushover notifications.

Intro:

My sister is into gardening and planting and I wanted to make something that could automatically water the plants if needed. I also wanted to combine what I learnt in my previous project to incorporate a notification system when the plants have been watered or not.

Materials:

• 5V Pump W Tubing
• Moisture Sensor
• 5V Relay
• 12V Power Supply
• Water Tank
• Dupont Cables
• Pi 3B

Intial Testing:

After the initial setup of installing Raspbian and configuring it I first started to play around with the moisture sensor to see if I could get a reading of whether or not it was activating.

After studying the GPIO diagram I hooked up the sensor and wrote some code to detect if it was in water.

import RPi.GPIO as GPIO

GPIO.setmode(GPIO.BCM)
GPIO.setup(20, GPIO.IN)

if GPIO.input(20):
    # off
    print("Soil is not wet")
else:
    # on
    print("Soil is wet!")

soil_test.py

Now that the moisture sensor was correctly reading I could focus on powering the pump and understanding how the relay works.

This was a bit harder than my previous projects but after watching this video I understood how the wiring worked.

I then wrote more code to power on the pump from my raspberry pi.

import RPi.GPIO as GPIO
import time

channel = 21
# GPIO setup
GPIO.setmode(GPIO.BCM)
GPIO.setup(channel, GPIO.OUT)


def pump_off(pin):
    GPIO.output(pin, GPIO.HIGH)  # Turn pump off


def pump_on(pin):
    GPIO.output(pin, GPIO.LOW)  # Turn pump on



pump_on(channel)
time.sleep(5)
pump_off(channel)
GPIO.cleanup()

pump_test.py

This code allowed me to pump the water out for 5s and then power down my pump.

The main app:

After I figured out how to power the pump and get a reading for the soil sensor it wasn't too hard to get them to work in tangent.

import RPi.GPIO as gpio
import time
import sys
from pushover import init,Client

# pushover
init("<api key>")

pump_pin = 21
soil = 20
sec_to_water = 30

gpio.setmode(gpio.BCM)
gpio.setup(pump_pin, gpio.OUT)
gpio.setup(soil, gpio.IN)


def pump_off():
    gpio.output(pump_pin, gpio.HIGH)


def pump_on():
    gpio.output(pump_pin, gpio.LOW)


def soil_check(seconds):
    if gpio.input(20):
        print("Watering the plant for:" + str(seconds) + "s")
        # off
        pump_on()
        time.sleep(seconds)
        pump_off()
        print("Finished Watering! Now sending push notification...")
        Client("<user key>").send_message(
            "Pumped water to the plants", title="Plants have been watered!"
        )
        gpio.cleanup()
    else:
        pump_off()
        gpio.cleanup()
        print("Sending notification plants already watered!")
        Client("<user key>").send_message(
            "No water pumped to plants", title="Plants have already been watered!"
        )
        sys.exit()


soil_check(sec_to_water)

main.py

This code allowed me to do the following:

• Check if the soil is wet or not and store it in a variable called wet.
• If !wet pump water.
• If wet then don't pump water.

I also incorporated what I learnt from my pi-mail project to add notifications to when the plant gets watered and when it is not.

Final Demo:

Video Link

In the video you can see the setup of the water tank and raspberry pi in a container with the needed components. More pics can be found in the pics folder

I also setup the linux crontab allowing me to schedule this python command everyday at 7PM

00 19 * * * python /home/pi/plant-pi/main.py &

Conclusion

This project was a lot more fun than my other one as it was cool to see a water pump be powered on when I told it to.

To improve this project I could maybe:

• Add a camera to my pi and take a photo every time it was getting watered and send it to pushover.
• Maybe add a web interface with a camera to watch the plant and pump it directly from the web