A Plant Box With Lightning and Raining

About: Hello, the author of the project is an Application Engineer of Seeed Studio. It's great to share this project with the Hackster maker community. I hope you like Seeed Studio, a hardware enabler for IoT applications, which provides services that enable IoT developers to quickly prototype... More information about Seeed Studio »

I am a plant hobbyist. Few days a one of my friends give me a plate of plant, I don't know the name of this plant, but I like it anyway.

And I want to built a hour for my plant to detect some data, such temperature, humidity, and the CO2, cu'z I want to know it my plant is health or not.

What I concern about is how to watering it. It's no that funny is you just put some water in it. Yesterday, Shenzhen rained very heavy and with lighting, you know it always rain cats and dogs in the summer of Shenzhen. I was inspired from the rain. Of curse it don't mean I will put the plant to outside and rain it.

I was thinking why not built a box can rain and with lighting.

Sounds like a good idea, just MAKE!

Step 1: The Video

Step 2: Prepare Materials and Tools

Control Board

• Raspberry Pi 2 Model B
• GrovePi
• Hercules Dual 15A 6-20V Motor Controller

Sensor & Actuator

• Grove - Moisture Sensor
• Grove - Button
• Grove - Relay
• Grove - Gas sensor(O2)
• Grove - LCD RGB Backlight
• Grove - Temperature Sensor

The others electronic module

• Humidifier
• 12V DC Water Pump
• WS2812B LEDs
• 12V DC Jack Power (power Hercules board)
• 24V DC Jack Power (power the humidifier)

Tools

• Screwdriver
• Nipper
• Screw & Cu Pillar

Laser cutting Machine & materials

• Laser cutting machine
• 5mm wood
• 3mm transparent acrylic

I guess you don't have a laser cutting at home, you can find some in the hacker space near from you easily. If there's no hacker space nearby, you can try the Laser Cutting Service supply by Seeed.

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Step 3: Laser Cutting the Wood to Make a Fence

First let's prepare some materials:

• some wood board, 5mm
• Backet x 4
• Pan head screws x 16
• cooky jar
• Use the laser cutting to cut out four piece of fence and four rectangles
• Put two fence tegother and keep 90 angles
• Give a bracket
• Fit it with four Pan head screws
• Fit four recrangles, it will be uesful for cooky jar. Repeat the above steps, then you get a fence.
• Put the cooky jay in this fence.

Step 4: Make the Body of the Case

Prepare for material:

• Ttransparent acrylic plate
• CNC bending machines

And a few steps:

• Use the laser cutting to cut out two acrylic of 370*300*2mm
• Fold it as picture with CNC bending machines

Step 5: Make the Roof

Prepare for material:

• Ttransparent acrylic polished plate of 2.5mm
• Glue gun
• Allen driver and allen screws*4(R=3mm*7mm)
• Screw driver and screws*4(R=3mm*5mm)
• Stand（as picture, mybe you can call it copper hex bolt:)*4/per kind (Stand1:R=3mm*7mm;Stand2:R=3mm*10mm)

A few steps to follow:

Step9: Use the laser cutting to cut out some clouds and rectangules

Step10: Put the cloud in the rectangule1

Step11: Join them together with Glue gun

You han done the first floor.

Step12:Top is screws and Bottom is Stand1 with first floor.

Step13:Fit

Step14:Put Rectangle2 on the Stand1

Step15:Put Stand2 in Rectangle2

Step16:Fit

Then you han done the second floor.

Step17:CNC a water box

Step18:Put the box under the second floor with the allen screws.

Then you got the third one:Cloud Part

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Step 6: Water Pump Installation

You need to get soft water pipe, you can buy it in the Hardware Store, or eBay maybe.

Just put it to the back of the Fence, and tight with 2 screw.

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Step 7: Hardware Install 1 - Built the Control Center

It's no a very easy step to go. You need to do some soldering here, if you had never solder something, why not just start here.

First of all, let's cut 2 acrylic, download the file here, or you can check it in the attachment.

In the end of this step, we will get a control center, which looks like a small pc host. You can refer to image 11 and 12.

First we need to laser cut some, the acrylic top and bottom. Click here to download 2d file.

Then the hardest part is coming. We need to paste some interface on the bottom acrylic, they are

• 4 pin grove interface x 4
• jst2.0 jack x 2
• DC Jack x 2

Put them on the right place just as shown in image 3 and 4. Pitch them om the bottom acrylic with some AB glue.

Then you should solder some cable on each connect, don't know the connection? Never mind, will tell you soon. As shown in image 5.

Connection of GrovePi please refer to image 13.

Connection of Hercules please refer to image 14.

Attachments

📷plant_control_center.cdr

Download

• 📷plant_control_center.cdrDownload

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Step 8: Hardware Installtion 2 - Sensor on the Plant Case

2 More Images

After the above steps, we had made a fence and acrylic case. Now we are going to install some sensor and cable on it.

They are:

• Grove - Moisture Sensor
• Humidifier
• Water pump
• Grove - Temperature Sensor
• Grove - CO2 Sensor

As it's very hard to describe the details, so please refer to the image, as a MAKER, I think you can make it out :XD

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Step 9: Software Working on Raspberry Pi

2 More Images

The operating system on Raspberry Pi 2 is Windows 10 for IoT Core. If this is your first time to run Windows 10 for IoT Core on your device, please click http://ms-iot.github.io/content/en-US/GetStarted.... here to get more information.

Download the Code

This project is made as an Open Source Project. You can download the demo code from GitHub.

Click “Download ZIP” just as the picture below shows. And decompress it to any folders.

Run it

Double click on the “Rpi.sln”. Then you’ll find there’re 3 projects in the Solution Explorer. Choose the “RPI(Windows Universal)” project, Click “Debug ” -> “Rpi Properties” as shown in Image 2.

Then according to the below content of the red box marked to configure your project. Please note that the “Remote machine” IP address should be your own. (Image 4)

After all of the configuration is set up, Click “Build Solution”, when it’s finished built click “Deploy Solution”(Image 5)

At last, you’ll find the code is running on your Raspberry.

Self-starting Function

If you want to let your device startup automatically, you should remotely configure and manage the device using Windows PowerShell. PowerShell is a task - based command - line shell and scripting language, if you want more information click here .

Please follow this link to see how to set the code as the Startup App.

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Step 10: Make It Work

Finally, put a plate of plant into the box, better the water-like plant, or it may kill the plant with so many water.Put some water into the box, press the button, then something magic will happen.At the last, HAPPY HACKING.