Hey There Little Plant. Let’s Be Friends!

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Perhaps, you’re circle of friends is getting too small. Or maybe, you just want to communicate with the leafy, green beings that have rooted themselves in the soil inside your house. If so, this environmental monitoring system will be perfect for you!

Created by [Dickson], this project monitors soil moisture, air temperature, and air humidity of your indoor plants and will alert you via email and SMS when your plants are thirsty. No longer will your sprouts shrivel up in the sun, but rather, they will be well-hydrated ready to produce their veggie goodness.

The system is battery operated, wireless, Arduino and Raspberry Pi based and comes with an Android app, which in turn allows you to view real-time and historical data, thus giving you the option to check in on your crew of Chlorophyll-embedded friends.

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Let’s look at the sensors which are at work on the project.

The sensors that make up this system are arranged in a set-sequence of monitoring nodes. For example, [Dickson] uses a Moteino (a low,power Arduino clone with an RF transceiver), a soil moisture sensor, a humidity sensor, a temperature sensor and a battery meter. The main sensor node collects the data and transmits it via the transceiver over the 915mhz ISM band to the base station. From there, the base station houses another Moteino, which acts as a gateway to receive the RF signals, and a Raspberry Pi where the data is stored in a MySQL database and feeds the information to the Plant Friends mobile app.

[Dickson]’s goal with this project is to release it into to the world so other beginners can learn how to develop a similar plant monitoring system as well.

And what makes this idea even better, it that all the components can be placed in cute little custom, bamboo boxes giving you a greater sense that your group of friends has gotten even bigger.

poster_04_01For more information about the project and to see more adorable photos, be sure to check out [Dickson]’s how-to-tutorial on his main site. Full instructions are also located in the first link posted above.

Another hack that is worth checking out is this rain barrel irrigation system keeps your outdoor plants fed when you’re too busy, which was covered by us in 2012.

12 thoughts on “Hey There Little Plant. Let’s Be Friends!

  1. From SParkfun …
    Electric Imp $30
    April Breakout Board: $14
    Humidity and Temperature Sensor – RHT03: $10
    Soil moisture sensor: ??
    Imp sends data to website, email, SMS, etc.

    I wonder how much all of his stuff costs?

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