If you ever have spent a day hauling soil/gravel you know this can cause some serious pains in your back. Now with the Lawnbot 400 you can save some pain and let the evil robots do the hard labor for you. The project started as an arduino powered lawn mower with a custom PCB motor driver powered by a couple of wheel chair motors, which mike many projects he…
While my existing system was working I decided to make an upgrade to the electronics on my old system for several reasons: I needed to add more automated external controls (heater, fans, water pump) with my existing design this was entirely possible though was starting to get a little clunky. The existing controller (PS2 Controller, parallel port with various wires to control relays) worked but was not exactly compact….
Now I am playing with hydroponics in my grow box I want to monitor the temperature of my nutrient tank. This is important too hot it can bread disease too cold it can shock your plants. I also want to use the data to identify how ebb/flow cycles affect ambient and solution temperature (for my own nerd curiosity) I have been thoroughly impressed with the Dallas DS18S20 temperature sensor…
My first version of my cheap soil moisture sensor has worked great for me but it did have a couple flaws. The first issue was construction, though I had great luck on my first attempt though after trying to recreate additional sensors given the small amount of gypsum between the sensor and the probes were so thin it was extremely easy to crack the sensor and I normally have…
With the summer starting to come to a close it has been time for me to start thinking back to the computerized grow box. I have been doing some considerable work on the electronics and software over the summer. Better to break stuff while the plants are outside and not while killing them inside. Though I have been happy with my homemade gypsum soil sensors I decided to try…
The Idea and Design My PC Grow box was very effective though it did have some shortcomings along with my desire for tinkering caused me to create a new version code named “Project Everbearing” after the test subjects for the project, several Everbearing strawberry plants I propagated from my garden last Summer/Fall. The specific shortcomings I wanted to overcome were temperature control and limited size. My grow box has…