This is a cool project, I have been thinking of doing something similar (but not as complex). I was thinking a few well placed moisture sensors could be used to activate some soaker hose solenoids.

Posted at 1:27 am on Jul 24th, 2007 by Alan Parekh

very handy, perticularly if you live in Australia (water restrictions and everything).
If the lawns big enough several of these units and seperate sprinklers could ensure adequate watering where its needed.

Good job.

Posted at 9:45 am on Jul 24th, 2007 by Andrew

Wow. Hack-a-Day is reading my mind. I had to water a bunch of plants this morning for some family that’s out of town. I was thinking of a set up very much like this on my drive to work. Although my idea was for wireless communication powered by solar panels ala beambots (not sure if it would realistically provide enough power though, but a guy can dream).

Posted at 10:44 am on Jul 24th, 2007 by Juan

This is a really cool project, I work for a non-profit that deals with Peak Oil and energy use, we’ve deployed some weather stations from Davis Instruments to do this kind of stuff, it comes with a wireless console and all sorts of nifty sensors, but the damn things cost $1,000 a pop, this may be a cheap alternative to Davis’s juggernaut. Does anyone feel like getting paid to make a few of these for us?

Posted at 2:24 pm on Jul 24th, 2007 by Tim

This is a really awesome job. I gonna make one similar soon. My idea is to hack some cheap solar garden lights to house the sensors and transfer the data wirelessly. It would be more convenient to deploy and rearrange the sensors.

Posted at 4:28 pm on Jul 24th, 2007 by Taotaoba

neither geocities nor the cache work. Could someone post the site somewhere? This looks very cool.

Posted at 6:35 pm on Jul 24th, 2007 by nick

I agree; wireless and solar powered would be cooler, but I just knocked it out with the KISS principle.

Tim; how many of these would you need?

Posted at 7:05 pm on Jul 24th, 2007 by Ken_S.

Exactly what ive been looking for! Im doing the same for my lawn and garden, but adding a nutrient injector to switch between lawn and garden (different nutrients)…

anyone been able to get the code file of the remote programming module? i cant seem to download it..

Posted at 7:16 am on Jul 25th, 2007 by roger8wilco

Ken,That thing is too cool to have it stuck on geocities. You pick up gardenmon.com/net/org ($7/year from Go Daddy) and I’ll host it for nothing for a year. (After that I might ask for a few bucks/year. Since you
would own the domain, I can’t hold you hostage. :)

Posted at 11:08 am on Jul 25th, 2007 by 787B

found a good url:
http://www.geocities.com.nyud.net:8080/GardenMon/GardenMon.html
guess it got truncated :\

Posted at 11:13 am on Jul 26th, 2007 by Gern

I’m not sure how many we would need, I’d have to talk to my boss, but we have Energy Farms all over the globe that could use this kind of monitoring without the $1kUSD for a Davis weather station– would it be easy to add more sensors for more info and.. oh I dunno, an application that put the data online :P

Posted at 4:37 pm on Jul 26th, 2007 by Tim

defenetly could be a very usefull tool. I have been working on same concept, but involving more basic “hardware”…
link was broken, and i wonder… Is it working?
kindly amazed,

luis

Posted at 5:40 pm on Aug 9th, 2007 by luis

>link was broken, and i wonder… Is it working?

No, the link is broken. GeoCities has some how declaired me in violation of their Terms of Service. I’ve bounced a few E-Mails back and forth trying to find out exactly what the violation is.

>same concept, but involving more basic hardware

PicAxe’s are pretty darn basic, what did you have in mind?

Good Luck!
Ken_S.

Posted at 5:41 pm on Aug 11th, 2007 by Ken_S.

You probably got the “slashdot” effect and they pulled your site because it was sucking a lot of bandwidth after hackaday picked you out.

I am highly interested in this project. Any chance you’ll get it back online soon?

Posted at 11:32 am on Aug 13th, 2007 by Chance

>they pulled your site because it was sucking a lot of bandwidth.

Probably, but every time I E-Mail them I just get back the exact same form letter. I don’t think anybody reads the message, they copy & paste the form letter in the reply and go to the next message.

>I am highly interested in this project.

What do you want to know about it?

Good Luck!
Ken_S.

Posted at 8:31 pm on Aug 14th, 2007 by Ken_S.

I am interested in the whole project. More so the probes you used and the methodology in general, as I have experience and development tools for AVR.

Posted at 11:29 am on Sep 7th, 2007 by chance