D
Deleted73907
Guest
Hi,
okay, this isn't really something new, but during this summer vacation I felt a need for the following item that I would actually buy:
It would be really nice having a cheap automatic plant watering, where there is also the opportunity to control it from remote. I have a lot of sunflowers on my balcony which are quite thirsty in the summer months, needing watering every day.
The idea would be something like I lie somewhere at the beach, open an app on my phone, take a look at my plants through a camera and switch on my watering, or, alternatively, switch to an automatic program.
Out of curiosity and as a first shot I built an ad-hoc plant watering on my balcony (see video and pic), without any remote control so far.
View: https://youtu.be/nuq1i-I2zDA
The thing is very primitive as you might recognize at the first glance. It just consists of a small pump, a float switch, a small box which separates pump circuitry and float switch circuitry (via relay), a clock timer and wiring. Plus, of course, the mechanical parts (hoses and a valve).
The advantage: It was cheap (around 20€ for the electrical parts excluding the power supply, around 10€ for the mechanical parts), and I was able to build it quickly with recycled parts in under 1h.
As we are discussing ideas and basic concepts I would appreciate basic feedback for the idea of further developing such a watering device. As mentioned, I want to implement a remote control via android app, and on the mechanical level it would be cool having rather a kit with different-sized hoses, valves and hydraulic distributions.
With a Raspberry Pi for instance, one is able to devise a remote control via a couple of lines python code (Input/Output ports) that can be activated via app, and also to connect a camera (but I have not much experience with a Raspberry Pi so far). Of course that cannot be the actual solution if I want to scale this (?) since a Raspberry Pi costs between 80€ and 100€. Nobody would buy a plant watering for >100€ I guess.
Goal would be of course as always, developing something low-priced that fulfills an actual need.
Before I created this post I made some mandatory quick research of course, but I wasn't able to find something in this context that I would actually buy. If you have something like a link, I would really appreciate it.
This thread on the FLF was quite funny to read: Why did this product fail?
But anyway, thanks in advance.
okay, this isn't really something new, but during this summer vacation I felt a need for the following item that I would actually buy:
It would be really nice having a cheap automatic plant watering, where there is also the opportunity to control it from remote. I have a lot of sunflowers on my balcony which are quite thirsty in the summer months, needing watering every day.
The idea would be something like I lie somewhere at the beach, open an app on my phone, take a look at my plants through a camera and switch on my watering, or, alternatively, switch to an automatic program.
Out of curiosity and as a first shot I built an ad-hoc plant watering on my balcony (see video and pic), without any remote control so far.
The thing is very primitive as you might recognize at the first glance. It just consists of a small pump, a float switch, a small box which separates pump circuitry and float switch circuitry (via relay), a clock timer and wiring. Plus, of course, the mechanical parts (hoses and a valve).
The advantage: It was cheap (around 20€ for the electrical parts excluding the power supply, around 10€ for the mechanical parts), and I was able to build it quickly with recycled parts in under 1h.
As we are discussing ideas and basic concepts I would appreciate basic feedback for the idea of further developing such a watering device. As mentioned, I want to implement a remote control via android app, and on the mechanical level it would be cool having rather a kit with different-sized hoses, valves and hydraulic distributions.
With a Raspberry Pi for instance, one is able to devise a remote control via a couple of lines python code (Input/Output ports) that can be activated via app, and also to connect a camera (but I have not much experience with a Raspberry Pi so far). Of course that cannot be the actual solution if I want to scale this (?) since a Raspberry Pi costs between 80€ and 100€. Nobody would buy a plant watering for >100€ I guess.
Goal would be of course as always, developing something low-priced that fulfills an actual need.
Before I created this post I made some mandatory quick research of course, but I wasn't able to find something in this context that I would actually buy. If you have something like a link, I would really appreciate it.
This thread on the FLF was quite funny to read: Why did this product fail?
But anyway, thanks in advance.
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