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Autonomous Plant Watering
31–40 of 51 posts
Re: Autonomous Plant Watering
#32I don't think I need to tell anyone that running any pump dry, unless it's sold to do so, is a bad idea.
Why didn't they pump the water from the tank to the plants? Why did they rely on pressure? That puts a whole lot of strain on the pump.
Re: Autonomous Plant Watering
#33The Wifi outlet seems like mega overkill to run a schedule. Couldn't you just use one of these? https://www.google.co.uk/search?q=socket+timer+us&safe=off&b...
And there are OpenWRT-enabled ones. I can't wait for a socket that can hacked and that I need to regularly update!
The IoT future is looking very bleak, with all the vulnerabilities it's going to introduce.
Re: Autonomous Plant Watering
#34I built my own little system yesterday that use no electricity.
An upsidedown 2L bottle sits above a reservoir and if the water gets too low it glubs out some more water. Air gets in, water comes out, now more air can't get in because the reservoir water is too high.
A set of aquarium tubes keeps the water level even between the reservoir and each plant. The plants are all in double planters, with water in the bottom one. Clothes strips wick the water up throughout the soil in the top planters, keeping the soil constantly moist.
It's been less than a day, so we'll see how it goes but the whole thing was cheap and simple.
Re: Autonomous Plant Watering
#35I don't think I need to tell anyone that running any pump dry, unless it's sold to do so, is a bad idea. Why didn't they pump the water from the tank to the plants? Why did they rely on pressure? That puts a whole lot of strain on the pump.
That's actually explained in the article. Plus it's an air pump...
Re: Autonomous Plant Watering
#36My mother always recommended to use a string, which will soak up the water and lead it to the plant.
Re: Autonomous Plant Watering
#37http://www.richsoil.com/hugelkultur/ | hugelkultur is real autonomous plant watering - I have built 4 of them on my .35 acre property.
Also called "raised-bed gardening"? At least it looks like the same or very similar concept.
Traditional raised bed gardens don't hold water well and require artificial watering almost every day due to how they drain - At least in my experience.
Hugels hold water and slowly allow plants to wick the moisture when it is needed. They really start working well at year 2-3.
Re: Autonomous Plant Watering
#38http://www.richsoil.com/hugelkultur/ | hugelkultur is real autonomous plant watering - I have built 4 of them on my .35 acre property.
Hey, I've got one half-built! I was building mine in a line/row and trying to get it as tall as possible, but I could only reasonably get it to about 4 feet. I imagine it'll settle to ~2 feet in the end. It's about 3 feet wide at the base and about 45 feet long, mostly awaiting me to mound the dirt up. I haven't decided what to plant it with, though.
Yeah, one of them that I built is hollow inside due to using lots of sticks and branches instead of logs, I assume it will settle in time and shrink considerably.
Re: Autonomous Plant Watering
#39I built my own little system yesterday that use no electricity. An upsidedown 2L bottle sits above a reservoir and if the water gets too low it glubs out some more water. Air gets in, water comes out, now more air can't get in because the reservoir water is too high. A set of aquarium tubes keeps the water level even between the reservoir and each plant. The plants are all in double planters, with water in the bottom…
Plants will die without air to the soil/roots. Many plants require wet/dry cycles.
You should start seeing fungus gnats in a week or so.
Re: Autonomous Plant Watering
#40Worked on a similar concept during a hackathon. You could potentially connect plant watering to a system like Nest/Toon and get data from all your plants - track temperature, soil moisture, water and energy spending.