RPirrigo: watering system with Raspberry Pi

RPirrigo emerged in the context of the historical heat wave announced for the summer of 2022 in Europe. The sole purpose of this project was to guarantee the survival of the plants in my apartment, considering that they have completely different watering needs (tamarinds, clovers, lemon trees, a dracaena, basil, parsley, mango)

This project included two components: i) the software side implemented in python and ii) the hardware that included a Rasberry Pi (RPi), the Pi camera, two peristaltic pumps, water pipes, and simple aquarium valves.

The whole program is activated through an automated cron task where the RPi is also rebooted every day. The later to ensure the functioning during long periods of absence.

Overall, the system triggers two peristaltic pumps during a given period of time in seconds (calibrated with a testing tube to measure the amount of water delivered). Then, the Pi camera module is activated and a picture of the plants is taken. A few seconds later, an email is sent to me with the latest stored picture. Each action of the program is recorded in a log file to keep track of the processes executed even after the multiple reboots.

I enjoyed coding the logic of RPirrigo with standard python libraries (dotenv, schedule, Pi camera and the GPIO controllers) and putting together the circuits and pipes. Despite all these efforts, the mango plant did not make it but the rest of them survived the summer ‘caliente’ indoors.

# IoT #  python #  raspberryPi