Automated Plant Waterer
As a part of a class project, I built an automatic plant watering robot capable of automatic watering, soil hydration measurement, ambient condition measurement, multiple visual readouts, and wifi control.
Problem
Despite a love of greenery around the home, I am chronically bad at consistently watering my plants. This project stemmed from that problem when challenged to create a real world problem solving robot for a class. The goals for this system were to (1) consistently measure soil moisture and add water when necessary, (2) Display readouts to the user for soil moisture level, and (3) enclose the full system in a self contained unit.
The Design
A few key components were brought together to make this project possible: a perisaltic pump for water movement, a resistive moisture measurement probe, a DHT11 humidity and temperature sensor for ambient measurement, an 8x1 shift register controlled LED progress bar, an OLED screen for status updates, and a ESP8266 microcontroller for overall control. With these components, the system would consistently take measurements of soil moisture and add water once certain threshholds were reached. The overall moisture was displayed on the LED progress bar, and the OLED displayed status during watering or temperature and humidity between cycles.
