Arduino Project Ideas! What'chya Got?

[Reverend Jim]

Wow, Loving this stuff. I wish I had the brains/experience to wrap my head around all of it. However, I'm a perpetual tinkerer, so I want to try to take a baby step. If I were to want to make a humidity monitor that I could plug into the USB on my laptop (or even a controller that turns on off a 120 V US household outlet that a dehumidifier is plugged into), where would I start? Any good tutorial out there on the interwebs to cut my teeth on for something like that? Thanks all...

 

[Hackerman]

Google 'grow room automation'. It will take you to a zillion links.

Most stuff today does not require programming skills and many run via smart phone apps.

Switches and sensors can be cheap or expensive.

 

[stemznseedz]

• temp notification
• humidity notification
• lighting notification
• water spillage notification and auto shutoff
• automate watering
• automate nutrient dosing into nutrient res

i know all this can be done i've been on the fence about doing this system or just getting something like a vera plus that's a z wave controller and also integrate the camera system

 

[sharprock]

If I were to want to make a humidity monitor that I could plug into the USB on my laptop (or even a controller that turns on off a 120 V US household outlet that a dehumidifier is plugged into), where would I start?

https://www.hackster.io/attari/temperature-monitoring-with-dht22-arduino-15b013

Ideally there should be a 10KOhm resister between Data and Vcc on the DHT22

 

[Saint Skinny]

https://www.hackster.io/attari/temperature-monitoring-with-dht22-arduino-15b013

Ideally there should be a 10KOhm resister between Data and Vcc on the DHT22

Damn, you beat me to it! lol I was gonna suggest the DHT22 as well.

Wow, Loving this stuff. I wish I had the brains/experience to wrap my head around all of it. However, I'm a perpetual tinkerer, so I want to try to take a baby step. If I were to want to make a humidity monitor that I could plug into the USB on my laptop (or even a controller that turns on off a 120 V US household outlet that a dehumidifier is plugged into), where would I start? Any good tutorial out there on the interwebs to cut my teeth on for something like that? Thanks all...

If you want to control an outlet, you'll need to add a 120V relay. I started out with this simple project that got me hooked. As previously mentioned, there should be a 10K ohm resistor between 'VCC' and '+5v'

It's a good one if you just want something to log the data and store it to an SD card. This is a bare bones logger for Temp (F&C), RH, and Heat Index, the biggest downside IMHO is that it doesn't tell the time, just duration the unit's been running... Although that can be easily solved with the addition of a Real Time Clock like the DS3231. Then down the line you can just add a relay if you want it to control something.

 

[Hackerman]

Those DHT22 sensors are terribly inaccurate.

I'll see if I can find the ones I used. I did use the DHT22 for a while but kept having problems with spikes. Every now and then it will read the temp as 4000F and it fucks up the graph.

 

[Saint Skinny]

• temp notification
• humidity notification
• lighting notification
• water spillage notification and auto shutoff
• automate watering
• automate nutrient dosing into nutrient res

i know all this can be done i've been on the fence about doing this system or just getting something like a vera plus that's a z wave controller and also integrate the camera system

It all boils down to Time and Money.
The Vera Plus takes more money, but less time
A DIY would take less money but more time.

It looks like you'd have to have Wifi connected appliances or Outlets for this to work. Of course all of which are sold separately.

I'm wondering if Raspberry Pi wouldn't be better suited for that type of project. Have you lookd into those?

 

[Hackerman]

For temp and humidity, I used the HTU21D. https://www.adafruit.com/product/1899

For light, I used the tls2561. https://www.adafruit.com/product/439

For CO2 most of the sensors don't work. The 811 is fair but there's no driver. I did find one that worked but I'll have to look it up. And, it was the only sensor that was expensive. I'll look it up and post later.

EDIT: The CO2 sensor is the MHZ19

 

[Saint Skinny]

Those DHT22 sensors are terribly inaccurate.

I'll see if I can find the ones I used. I did use the DHT22 for a while but kept having problems with spikes. Every now and then it will read the temp as 4000F and it fucks up the graph.

Cheese and rice, man! 4,000°F!? Are you sure it didn't just teleport down to the earth's mantle and back while you weren't paying attention? lol

But on a serious not, I'm always intrigued by those types of errors. Were you using a standalone DHT22 or one of the DHT22 breakout boards? IE:

^^^DHT22 sensor (Standalone)^^^
__________________________________________________________________________

^^^DHT22 Module^^^

 

[Hackerman]

I tried both. I had the same problem with both of them.

 

[Hackerman]

I tried both. I had the same problem with both of them.

 

[Reverend Jim]

Wow! Thanks y'all -- got enough reading material to last me a while. Can't wait to see what I can cobble together.

 

[Saint Skinny]

I have not incorporated my Arduino yet but I have 3 Raspberry Pi's going. One in each room.

Keeps track of Temp, Humidity, CO2, and some other stuff. The moisture sensors go into each pot and monitor water in each pot. There's a camera attached to each one so it can do a pretty cool time lapse. I still have a lot to do but Summer came and I dropped the ball until it gets cold again.

The RPi monitors real well. The Arduino responds to the RPi data well. The 2 work great together.

Here is what it looks like right now. Like I said, I still have plenty to do. :)

View attachment 829540

so how much hardware does something like that require? I'm looking into the RPi Zero considering making something similar to what you've got down the road. I'm most interested in accessing the data via wifi, but the camera would be a nice touch.
I was originally thinking I'd just add an ESP8266 or start the project with a WeMos D1 Wifi or an Uno R3 Wifi but You've got me thinking more about RPi.

 

[Hackerman]

RPi's are pretty cheap. I think around $30 or so. However, power supplies, sensors, etc all seem to add up. LOL

 

[Saint Skinny]

RPi's are pretty cheap. I think around $30 or so. However, power supplies, sensors, etc all seem to add up. LOL

Right! So can you use the same breakout boards with RPi as with Duino? I like the idea of wifi connectivity but don’t want to have to buy new sensors on top of learning the new system.

 

[SmithsJunk]

I was looking into using Arduimo or Pi III for something like this but ran out of money before I could start. Wanted to connect everything to computer and maybe use Nvidia's new AI tech to run it all. I'll try go this way once I reestablish a good cash flow. Probably will keep it to just the simple Arduimo or Pi III project though. AI is a bit too big a bite.

https://www.instructables.com/id/Hyduino-Automated-Hydroponics-with-an-Arduino/

 

[Hackerman]

Right! So can you use the same breakout boards with RPi as with Duino? I like the idea of wifi connectivity but don’t want to have to buy new sensors on top of learning the new system.

Yes, MOST of the breakout boards and sensors that work with the RPi also work with the Arduino.

 

[Jacmeoff]

i'm trying to keep it as simple as possible. A flood and drain setup that only controls my temps automatically when the lights are on. Lights & flood pump are controlled using millis, I didn't see a reason the have an rtc controlling timer functions if the timing is to be consistent. As for ph & res water level control. I'm gonna have the arduino check these after every flood cycle & have led's to indicate if these are off & easily seen from a distance. This is the only time i would need to check in on the grow. So far, my lights, fans, water level & flood cycles are working perfectly for the past 10 months. I haven't started the programming for the ph probe as of yet & since this is a flood & drain set up with no airpump, my ph rarely fluctuates out of 5.8-6.2 range since it's flooded every 3 hours, which only happened twice so far because of once a day flood cycles in the beginning. Since then, I've only needed to check my ph when I'm topping up the res. I even have the same current setup in my pc momsai box which has been running for 9 months which uses a digispark.

 

[Saint Skinny]

i'm trying to keep it as simple as possible. A flood and drain setup that only controls my temps automatically when the lights are on. Lights & flood pump are controlled using millis, I didn't see a reason the have an rtc controlling timer functions if the timing is to be consistent. As for ph & res water level control. I'm gonna have the arduino check these after every flood cycle & have led's to indicate if these are off & easily seen from a distance. This is the only time i would need to check in on the grow. So far, my lights, fans, water level & flood cycles are working perfectly for the past 10 months. I haven't started the programming for the ph probe as of yet & since this is a flood & drain set up with no airpump, my ph rarely fluctuates out of 5.8-6.2 range since it's flooded every 3 hours, which only happened twice so far because of once a day flood cycles in the beginning. Since then, I've only needed to check my ph when I'm topping up the res. I even have the same current setup in my pc momsai box which has been running for 9 months which uses a digispark.

If you wanted you should be able to add a peristaltic pump or 2 and have it adjust the pH automatically

 

[Jacmeoff]

If you wanted you should be able to add a peristaltic pump or 2 and have it adjust the pH automatically

It was something i had considered when i was building my system to be a dwc sog system but after shutting down my dwc system for a week & didn't clean my system out, I went ahead & checked the ph which was still the same, I experimented & concluded that ph majorly changes when air was pumped through the solution. Ebb & flow without the airpump will only get the air in the solution when the solution is running back into the res. Since I'm running an perpetual sog (dr bud style harvesting every week) system in both 100% coco & 100% perlite, When I check the res, the solution is still basically the same as when i first put it in, so i would do my harvest, put my new clones in, top up the res with water, add more nutes to get my 500ppm & ph the res back to 6.0. All this just once a week, most times in less than 10 mins, unless I'm changing out the res & mind you this is once a week. Even if the res is really close to being empty, my solution is still close to the 500ppm & still within the 5.8-6.2 ph range. for me this works well since i harvest once a week anyway.