Smart Garden v3 allows users to collectively care for a single house plant. Live moisture, humidity, and temperature data can be used to decide whether the plant should be watered today. Historical trends can be used to track watering patterns and influence future decisions.
The Raspberry Pi runs a Python script which collects sensor data and pushes it to the web app. At the specified time, votes are counted. Majority vote determines whether the water pump is triggered. Google Authentication is used to securely prevent duplicate votes. This makes voting fair, safe, and accessible.
The Smart Garden is comprised of the following:
The Automation Hat allows the Pi to control the water pump via its relay. The analog inputs also allow for capacitive soil moisture readings.
This project is inspired by reddit user, u/TylerJaywood's democratic plant watering system. The original program operated solely through Reddit. Vote2Grow aims to give more users the ability to take care of my plant by collecting votes from Reddit, Vote2Grow.com, or any future projects. Huge thanks to u/cdoern01 for the tips and suggestions and for running r/TakeCareOfOurPlants
The original system used the following:
These sub-optimal components caused issues for users over time. The probes would corrode within a few months. The water pump was loud and inconsistent. The two-board setup took up a lot of space. Most notably, voting was limited to daily posts within the r/TakeCareOfOurPlants subreddit, limiting accessibility. In September, 2019, I began working on a new revision.
This newer system was built from the ground up in order to resolve the issues of the original Smart Garden. Here are the parts that were used in the Vote2Grow system:
The biggest change was moving to Google Firebase. Not only would this provide protection in the case that the Raspberry Pi died suddenly before the final vote tally, but it also allowed for votes to be submitted from a variety of sources. The first source of votes, Reddit, remained the same. The only difference was how votes were stored. Instead of a local text file on the Pi, new votes were sent to the database, updating the vote count across all platforms. The second source was a webapp, Vote2Grow. The Arduino was swapped for the Automation pHAT, which made the whole setup more compact. The inconsistent water pump was replaced with a new pump, and the conductive soil probes were swapped for corrosion-free capacitive probes.
This is the most recent revision of the Smart Garden system. The entire web app was rewritten for optimized performance and improved user experience. Smart Garden v3 has been moved from Google Firebase to Amazon Web Services (with the exception of 'Sign-in with Google'). The hardware remains the same, but everything has been refreshed under the hood.