Published May 6, 2018 © CC BY-NC-SA

Automatic garden irrigator (AGI)

By analyzing atmospheric values, this tiny unit can decide when to irrigate your garden if it is necessary.

IntermediateWork in progress20 hours3,205

Things used in this project

Hardware components

Arduino UNO

SparkFun Soil Moisture Sensor (with Screw Terminals)

Temperature Sensor

DHT11 Temperature & Humidity Sensor (4 pins)

Digilent Pmod RTCC

Adafruit Standard LCD - 16x2 White on Blue

SparkFun Big Red Dome Button

LED (generic)

Software apps and online services

Arduino IDE

fritzing

Hand tools and fabrication machines

welder

Story

Irrigating the garden is a tiring and repetitive job. My idea is to build a small central unit which can check weather and soil conditions. Then this unit will decide wether irrigate the garden, optimizing water consumption but at the same time obtaining the best results from the vegetables.

The most important things that the system will monitor are: temperature, sunlight and humidity of the soil. These three things are very important when you have to irrigate your garden. There mustnt' be too cold cause it could freeze the plants or too hot risking to burn them. Watering when the sunlight is very intense could burn the vegetables too. Then, for example, if it rained one hour ago, irrigating means wasting water.

For a best monitoring of weather conditions i added a DHT11 (humdity sensor). All the values collected by the system will be showed on the display connected to arduino. It will be possible to switch all the values by pushing an integrated button which will be change the information showed on the display.

Nevertheless if it seems to have all the necessary for this project, i wanted to add also a RC module for monitoring the time. This is an optimization choice cause it's obvious that the best conditions for watering the garden, if it has not rained for a while, are between 18.00 to 22.00/23.00 (6pm to 11pm) and from 8.00 to 10.00 (8am to 10 am).

Reference & contacts

Daniel Rossi

Instagram: @Onedead_match - @OfficialProjecto
linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/onedeadmatch/
email: Daniel_r@live.it

My YouTube Channel

https://www.youtube.com/channel/OfficialProjecto

Code

AGI code

#include <LiquidCrystal.h>
#include <Wire.h>
#include "RTClib.h"

#define TEMP A5 //LM35
#define H1 A0 //igrometro 1
#define H2 A1 //igrometro 2
#define H3 A2 //igrometro 3
#define H4 A3 //igrometro 4
#define H5 A4 //igrometro 5
#define HUM 5 //umidità
#define LHT 6 //intensità luminosa
#define BTN 4 //controllo display
#define MOTOR 12 //pompa acqua
#define SDA 10 //sda rtc
#define SCL 11 //scl rtc

int x = 0;
bool innaffiato = false;
LiquidCrystal lcd (8, 9, 3, 2, 1, 0);
RTC_DS1307 rtc;



void setup() {
  lcd.begin(16, 2);
  Serial.begin(9600);
  rtc.begin();
  Wire.begin();

  lcd.setCursor(0, 0);
  lcd.print("initialization");
  lcd.setCursor(0, 1);
  lcd.print("please wait");

  pinMode(TEMP, INPUT);
  pinMode(H1, INPUT);
  pinMode(H2, INPUT);
  pinMode(H3, INPUT);
  pinMode(H4, INPUT);
  pinMode(H5, INPUT);
  pinMode(HUM, INPUT);
  pinMode(LHT, INPUT);
  pinMode(BTN, INPUT);
  pinMode(MOTOR, OUTPUT);
  if (! rtc.isrunning()) {
    Serial.println("RTC is NOT running!");
    // following line sets the RTC to the date & time this sketch was compiled
    rtc.adjust(DateTime(__DATE__, __TIME__));
  }
  else
  {
    //    rtc.DateTime(2018, 04, 18, 11, 55, 0);
  }

  delay(1000);
  lcd.clear();
}

void loop() {
  DateTime _now = rtc.now();
  float t = analogRead(TEMP) / 2.046;
  float hyg1 = map(analogRead(H1), 1023, 350, 0, 100);
  float hyg2 = map(analogRead(H2), 1023, 350, 0, 100);
  float hyg3 = map(analogRead(H3), 1023, 350, 0, 100);
  float hyg4 = map(analogRead(H4), 1023, 350, 0, 100);
  float hyg5 = map(analogRead(H5), 1023, 350, 0, 100);
  float hm = map(analogRead(HUM), 1023, 350, 0, 100);
  float light = map(analogRead(LHT), 1023, 350, 0, 100);

  if (digitalRead(BTN) == HIGH)
    x++;
  if (x >= 9)
    x = 0;
  switch (x)
  {
    case 1:
      lcd.clear();
      lcd.setCursor(0, 0);
      lcd.print("Temperatura");
      lcd.setCursor(0, 1);
      lcd.print(t + '%'); //1 temperatura
      break;
    case 2:
      lcd.clear();
      lcd.setCursor(0, 0);
      lcd.print("igrometro 1");
      lcd.setCursor(0, 1);
      lcd.print(hyg1 + '%');
      break;
    case 3:
      lcd.clear();
      lcd.setCursor(0, 0);
      lcd.print("igrometro 2");
      lcd.setCursor(0, 1);
      lcd.print(hyg2 + '%');
      break;
    case 4:
      lcd.clear();
      lcd.setCursor(0, 0);
      lcd.print("igrometro 3");
      lcd.setCursor(0, 1);
      lcd.print(hyg3 + '%');
      break;
    case 5:
      lcd.clear();
      lcd.setCursor(0, 0);
      lcd.print("igrometro 4");
      lcd.setCursor(0, 1);
      lcd.print(hyg4 + '%');
      break;
    case 6:
      lcd.clear();
      lcd.setCursor(0, 0);
      lcd.print("igrometro 5");
      lcd.setCursor(0, 1);
      lcd.print(hyg5 + '%');
      break;
    case 7:
      lcd.clear();
      lcd.setCursor(0, 0);
      lcd.print("Umidita");
      lcd.setCursor(0, 1);
      lcd.print(hm + '%');
      break;
    case 8:
      lcd.clear();
      lcd.setCursor(0, 0);
      lcd.print("Luminosita");
      lcd.setCursor(0, 1);
      lcd.print(light + '%');
      break;
  }
  if (((light < 25) && (innaffiato == false)) && ((hyg1 < 30) || (hyg2 < 30) || (hyg3 < 30) || (hyg4 < 30) || (hyg5 < 30)) && ((_now.hour() > 17) && (_now.hour() < 23)))
    digitalWrite(MOTOR, HIGH);

  if ((hyg1 > 80) && (hyg2 > 80) && (hyg3 > 80) && (hyg4 > 80) && (hyg5 > 80))
  {
    digitalWrite(MOTOR, LOW);
    innaffiato = true;
  }
  if (_now.hour() == 1)
    innaffiato = false;
}