A circular concrete pond in a garden. A small round fountain jets water out in the center and a solar panel and control box are visible attached to the end of the pond opposite the camera. On the top left is the text, "3D printed, Solar powered, and Arduino controlled" in yellow

Solar Fountain Aerates Garden Pond

August 2, 2024 by Navarre Bartz 8 Comments

Sometimes off-the-shelf solutions to a problem don’t meet your expectations. That’s what led [TomGoff] to build his own solar pond fountain.

This build features a lot of creative reuse of materials [TomGoff] already had on hand, like the end of a cable reel for the platform and a wheelbarrow inner tube for flotation. A 3D printed nozzle in the center of this apparatus is attached to a 12 V water pump and the whole thing is controlled by an Arduino running 30 seconds on and 3 minutes off to conserve battery power.

A hand-built perfboard contains a light dependent resistor (LDR) to tell the Arduino not to run at night, the relay for the pump, and a battery charge monitor. Be sure to check out the full write-up to see the video of the Tinkercad electronics simulation as well as the code. A 20 W solar panel keeps the whole thing charged so you don’t have to run mains power out to your pond.

If you need more solar projects for your garden, how about this Charmander lamp or a solar powered irrigation system?

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Building The Most High-Tech Pond In The Neighborhood

August 11, 2022 by Tom Nardi 14 Comments

What do you think of when you hear the word pond? If you’re like most people, it conjures up images of a simple water-filled hole in the ground, maybe with a few fish added in for good measure. But not [Anders Johansson] — his pond is a technical marvel, utilizing more unique pieces of hardware and software than many of the more traditional projects that have graced these projects over the years.

In fact, this is one of those projects that is so grand in scope that any summary we publish here simply can’t do it justice. The aptly-named Poseidon project is built up of several modular components, ranging from an automated fish feeder to an array of sensors to monitor the condition of the water itself. How many other ponds can publish their current water level, pH, and oxygen saturation over MQTT?

The ESP8266 fish feeder is just one element of Poseidon

[Anders] has provided schematics, 3D models, and source code for all the various systems built into the pond, but the documentation is where this project really shines. Each module has it’s own detailed write-up, which should provide you with more than enough guidance should you want to recreate or remix what he’s put together. Even if you use only one or two of the modules he’s put together, you’ll still be ahead of the game compared to the chumps who have to maintain their pond the old fashioned way.

In the past we’ve seen projects that tackled some of the individual elements [Anders] has developed, such as 3D printed fish feeders, but after searching through the archives we can’t find anything that’s even half as ambitious as Poseidon. At least, not for ponds. It reminds us more of a highly advanced aquaponics setup, and we wonder if that might not be a possible spin-off of the core project in the future.