How to save money with some electronics DIY skills

[Angelo hydrosys4]

Reading around this forum I have found many good advises about hardware setup, piping, valve, pumps, but very little about the control systems except for indications about models and prices. About the prices of the control systems, I think there is quite a big margin of improvement assuming that you have some electronics DIY skills.
If interested you can have a look at this system based on the open source architecture, the main hardware
is the raspberry PI microcontroller and provides the following specs:

1. Control up to 8 irrigation line
   
2. Precise irrigation timing (order of seconds), Monthly irrigation scheduling, conditional irrigation based on the temperature and humidity
3. Possibility to schedule fertilization cycles using liquid fertilizer
4. Sensor data collection:
   • Temperature
   • Air Humidity
   • Atmospheric pressure
   • Light intensity
   • Soil moisture
5. Remote access to the system via Wifi connection and internet connection
6. Email notifications and alerts
7. Connection to webcam (up to 4 USB camera) + raspicam to remotely check your plants, schedule of daily pictures
8. Steaming video

Link to the project page:

https://hydrosysblog.wordpress.com/

 

[SuperGreg]

Wow, that looks pretty cool - I was planning on working on something like that myself from scratch. I was planning on having it check the weather and delay watering based on the amount of rain reported. I see he has the raspi detect moisture in the soil.

 

[Sponsor]

 

[Angelo hydrosys4]

hi Greg, thanks for the feedback. Let me know if you have the opportunity to install it on your raspberry. I recently made some updates and I'm still not confident the installation procedure is working 100%.
Regarding the rain sensor I was also thinking about it, but I didn't figure out yet what is the best way to implement it to keep the interface simple and the price low.

 

[SuperGreg]

My idea for the rain sensor was just to simply hit a weather site accessible on the Internet via the wifi that would report rainfall for your location. I haven't looked into it though!