A lazier version for the rest of us would be measuring how much time it takes to replenish the water once a day, and then turn on the pump for that amount of time each day. You can do this with a IFTTT routine and a smart plug.
An issue with that is that the tree will (at least based on my experience) soak up a variable about of water while it is set up. And in general, it will decrease as time goes on (as the tree dies more and more). If you set up the routine based on the first few days, you will likely end up overflowing.
The tech is interesting, but what I like even more is that it may increase the chances of survival of the tree if the root ball hasn't been cut! I hope there will be an effort to collect and replant Christmas trees, as the cultural practice of cutting down tree and letting them die slowly in front of us (just for our seasonal enjoyment!) strikes me as barbaric.
The trees are planted and farmed specifically to be Christmas trees. If nobody bought them, they wouldn’t be planted in the first place, so the act of cutting down then disposing of a Christmas tree has no net impact to the overall tree population (barring the small amount of Clark Griswolds out there who get their tree from a forest somewhere rather than a Christmas tree farm).
That’s all true, but most of the Christmas tree farms by me exist in land that would otherwise still be natural forest (and border forest land). There would still be trees there, as well as a whole ecosystem. So for at least the ones by me, one might consider them a net negative, ecologically?
The trees are planted and farmed specifically to be Christmas trees. If nobody bought them, they wouldn’t be planted in the first place, so the act of cutting down then disposing of a Christmas tree has no net impact to the overall tree population (barring the small amount of Clark Griswolds out there who get their tree from a forest somewhere rather than a Christmas tree farm).
> If nobody bought them, they wouldn’t be planted in the first place, so the act of cutting down then disposing of a Christmas tree has no net impact to the overall tree population From a carbon capture perspective, you could argue planting, cutting then burying trees is a net positive - but cutting is killing. From a moral perspective, financially helping an industry based on planting and cutting trees while not usi…
After Christmas they don't just end up in the landfill. They are often recycled into mulch. The material used for mulch needs to come from somewhere... So better for the tree to bring some joy in someone's home temporarily rather than just growing and being cut down.
I love ESPHome. The declarative language makes it fun and easy to do so many little tasks like this. Used with Home Assistant it makes it easy to create graphs of everything. Do I NEED to know how much water my tree consumes? No, but I like seeing it anyway! When controlling physical systems I try to limit the damage they can do with simple interlocks. For instance, the relay I added to control my central heat is in…
You can also use a float sensor and relay to control the pump, and use ESPhome for monitoring only.
A lazier version for the rest of us would be measuring how much time it takes to replenish the water once a day, and then turn on the pump for that amount of time each day. You can do this with a IFTTT routine and a smart plug.
An issue with that is that the tree will (at least based on my experience) soak up a variable about of water while it is set up. And in general, it will decrease as time goes on (as the tree dies more and more). If you set up the routine based on the first few days, you will likely end up overflowing.
I see. What if you drill a hole at a high water level and drain excess water?
Or use a toilet water tank kind of mechanism so that it turns off the thing manually through a switch if the water level is too high?
I built something like this but found that the electric arduino water sensor quickly became corroded after a week and a half and ended up replacing it with a float switch.
I also built something along these lines about three years ago and use it every year. I started off with a stainless steel hall effect float switch and it's lasted so far, on its fourth year. I don't have a pump for my water, I use my RO system as a source and a solenoid as a valve. I do use a peristaltic pump to meter out Christmas tree preservative according to the readings from a flow meter on the water side though. It's worked wonderfully, even when changing tree stands.
> If nobody bought them, they wouldn’t be planted in the first place, so the act of cutting down then disposing of a Christmas tree has no net impact to the overall tree population From a carbon capture perspective, you could argue planting, cutting then burying trees is a net positive - but cutting is killing. From a moral perspective, financially helping an industry based on planting and cutting trees while not usi…
After Christmas they don't just end up in the landfill. They are often recycled into mulch. The material used for mulch needs to come from somewhere... So better for the tree to bring some joy in someone's home temporarily rather than just growing and being cut down.
I would find it morally better if mulch could be made from leaves collected in the fall, but knowing about this recycling helps think more positively about the cutting.
because you can't program a siphon? a siphon isn't going to give you any data that you can then plot on a graph (if that's your kink). also, what kind of Show HN post would a siphon make? You'd just get a bunch of uninspired questions like this.
I love ESPHome. The declarative language makes it fun and easy to do so many little tasks like this. Used with Home Assistant it makes it easy to create graphs of everything. Do I NEED to know how much water my tree consumes? No, but I like seeing it anyway! When controlling physical systems I try to limit the damage they can do with simple interlocks. For instance, the relay I added to control my central heat is in…
You can also use a float sensor and relay to control the pump, and use ESPhome for monitoring only.
That’s what I’m thinking I’ll do if/when the sensor fails. Or for v2.
An issue with that is that the tree will (at least based on my experience) soak up a variable about of water while it is set up. And in general, it will decrease as time goes on (as the tree dies more and more). If you set up the routine based on the first few days, you will likely end up overflowing.
I see. What if you drill a hole at a high water level and drain excess water? Or use a toilet water tank kind of mechanism so that it turns off the thing manually through a switch if the water level is too high?
That mechanism is called a float valve. They’re really handy in all kinds of situations where you want something to fill, but not too much.