Smart Garden System 4 Plant Extender Kit (V1 - Retired)
The 4 Plant Extender Kit for the Smart Garden System allows an additional 4 plants to be added to the Smart Garden System. You can add up to two Extenders to one Smart Garden System for a total of 9 plants all under control of your Raspberry Pi. All the plants on the extender have their own capacitive moisture sensors included and each has their own controllable USB Pump.
News
- (November 8, 2018) Initial Production Release
It is designed to be easily and simply put together and tested with No Soldering Required!
Please go to the Product Support Forum for the Smart Garden System on forum.switchdoc.com for comments and questions.
Downloads
What is in the Kit?
The base Smart Garden System supports four additional plant. You can add additional plants using an additional SGS Extender Pack for a total of 9 plants.
- 4 Plant Grove Moisture Sensor and USB Pump Controller Board
- 4 Capacitive Moisture Sensors w/Grove Cable
- 4 USB Activated Pumps
- 1/4" od Hose 800mm, 4 Stakes for hose, 4 Plastic Plugs
- 3D Printed SGS Extender Stand
- 50 cm Grove to Grove Cable
Check out our Blynk App for observing and controlling the SGS across the Internet and the World!
We are using Blynk for controlling and displaying the SGS system. Here are a couple of screenshots.
About the Smart Garden System
This is a perfect project kit for advanced kids with some help from the adults and for adults trying to learn some new things. We have done this before with our successful OurWeather kickstarter so we know what we are talking about. People all over the world have built the OurWeather weather station with great success.
Check out the Base Smart Garden System Here.
Smart Garden System (or SGS for short) is an introductory, easy to build Raspberry Pi based environmental monitoring and plant watering system using advanced sensors to monitor the soil moisture, monitor the sunlight, watch the air quality and monitor temperature and humidity.
The Science Behind The Board
Our beloved (most of the time) CTO, Dr. John Shovic, always insists on putting in something about the theory behind the project. Here are his thoughts.
This was a great project to design and build. It was really an interesting process learning about the sensors, how to interconnect them and then learning about flow meters, USB Pumps and especially the software bringing them all together.
Where is the science and engineering in this project? All through it from the bottom to the top. I could go through the entire system, but that will have to wait. The most interesting points? One, we are using feedback in the system. Negative feedback to be exact. We aren't just watering on a timer, we are looking at the soil moisture and if it is high enough, we don't water. We don't water unless we need to. Very cool.
Secondly, the sensors we have in this project are amazing. For example, the Air Quality sensor is very, very sensitive. We can detect hairspray from 50 feet away (more on that in an update).
Thirdly, I got a lot out of learning how to display the data from Smart Garden on the Blynk IOT App for Android and iPhones.