Arduino Lawn Care Is Web-controlled

[Joe Fernandez] is fairly new to the hardware side of the hobby, but he seems to have easily found his way on this project. He wanted to build his own web-bridge for his Toro lawn sprinkler system. He pulled it off with style and shows off the spoils of his work in the clip after the break.

He started with an Android ADK, crafting some web magic to use a REST interface and JSON packets as a communications scheme. This makes it possible to control the system from anywhere as long as you have an Internet connection. The rest of the hardware evolved as his needs became clear. The first hunk was to add an Ethernet shield so that he didn’t need to have his Android phone connected to the system for it to work. From there he needed to control the solenoid valves on the system and grabbed three relay shields from Seeed Studios for this purpose.

As you can see, all of that hardware has a home on a polyethylene cutting board. The terminal blocks at the bottom keep the connections nice and neat as they interface with the sprinkler system. We were happy to hear that the stock controller still works, this add-on doesn’t permanently alter it in any way. That’s going to be important if he ever wants to sell the home.

Still using a traditional sprinkler instead of an in-ground system? Perhaps this variable range hack is for you.

8 thoughts on “Arduino Lawn Care Is Web-controlled

  1. i am currently working with some these seeed relay boards soldered onto screw wing shields which go on top of freetronic ethertens.

    9V from VIN?

    Any problems switching D4 with the SS on the ethernet shield?

  2. Nice project. I like the Android interface. Just want to mention that I worked on a similar project , which is a web-based sprinkler time:
    http://rayshobby.net/opensprinkler
    it allows the user to set time schedules through an html webpage (see the video demo starting at 3:25).

    I’ve also implemented an individual station control webpage, similar to your Android interface:
    http://rayshobby.net/?p=1543

    Glad to see more posts on this topic!

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