“This time I present you an useful and affordable project very easy to build by our kids.
It is an automatic watering system controlled by a Pico:ed V2 board.
How it works: when the soil moisture sensor detects the soil is not moist enough (sad image), send a signal to a water pump to begin to water the plant (cry image). It only will happen if the water level sensor installed detects there is enough water in the plastic bowl to prevent the water pump damage. If the soil is moist enough, the board shows a smile image. By the other hand, if we keep pushing the button A, we can set up the number of seconds the water pump is watering the plant, from 1 to 10 seconds, and if we push the button B, the water pump will begin to watering the plant the number of seconds configured without taking into account the soil moisture.
I have built an indoor solution connected to whatever 5V mobile charger and an outdoor solution with solar panels.
With the Pico:ed V2 board we can introduce our kids the Python programming and to teach them this programming language so used in our days.
I hope you like it.
Supplies:
- Pico:ed V2 board
- IOBit V2 expansion board
- Plastic Bowl
- Little funnel
- 5V Water pump
- 5V Relay
- Water level sensor
- Soil moisture sensor
- Plastic tube
- 18650 Battery
- 18650 Battery Shield
- Four 1.5 V 400 mA solar panel
- Electric Cables
- M4 nuts, screw (20 milimeters) and washers
- M3 nuts, screw (20 milimeters) and washers”