Hi community!
I've been following this Pi discussion for a while and I want to start my own project based on the amazing job you guys are doing here. I want to build my own automatic watering system for my country house. I am not sure what I need (I'll buy anything you guys advise me to buy).
What I need is:
- To water 8 plants (or more if possible) automatically based on the soil moisture (I understand I have to buy the soil moisture sensors and I hope you can tell me what I need to buy as I dont have anything). I dont have running water so I will need a big water reservoir to store the water before the pump sends it to each plant individually (depending on the humidity needs of each).
Note:
I dont own a raspberry Pi but Ill buy the necessary one.
I don't have any knowledge of programming but I can understand what I've seen so far.
Questions
Do I need 8 pumps for each of the watering lines? (If so Ill reduce the number of lines to 4)
What hardware do I need apart from the Pi 3 (I saw the hat but I don't know what is it)
I will greatly appreciate your help as I would love to do this project in summer,
Cheers and many many thanks
Hi There, Welcome to the forum. I would say that the basic hardware to buy is the raspberry and the relay board. The relays act as a switch so you can connect to them the valves and the pump ( consider that the pump might absorb quite a number of amperes so the relay of the pump should be dimensioned accordingly). The valves should be non latching type. In my view the number of lines depends on two factors, the capacity of your pump and the grade of control you want to have on the irrigation zones as each line can be controlled independently. I think a good compromise would be to get a board with 8 relays so you can control 7 irrigation lines plus the pump. The specs of common relay boards are described in the hardware page of the hydrosys4 website. The system can be configured in the way that every time a valve is activated, the relay of the pump is also activated. Regarding the other hardware, the Hat boards are designed to simplify the connections with relays and other sensors, the automation hat also provides the interface for analog sensors required for most of the hygrometers. About the hygrometers they can be very useful but the setting, positioning and optimization requires some experience and some try&error approach as each case can be different from another. Hope I was able provide some useful info, for any other question I'm happy to help. Regards, Angelo