MEGR 3171 Plant Moisture Sensor

If you have owned/ own plants, you know its hard to keep them alive. The plant moisture sensor is here to help.

IntermediateFull instructions provided770

Things used in this project

Hardware components

Breadboard (generic)

Particle Argon

3-9 v power supply

SparkFun Soil Moisture Sensor (with Screw Terminals)

Software apps and online services

ThingSpeak API

Particle Build Web IDE

Hand tools and fabrication machines

Premium Female/Male Extension Jumper Wires, 40 x 6" (150mm)

Breadboard, 170 Pin

Story

This project is a passionate project for the three of us as we all are plant owners and are careful with the water level of our plants. Our Plant Moisture Sensor project uses 3 argon particles, a main, particle 1 and particle 2. Our main argon receives signals from our particle 1 and 2, and sends them to our cloud. Particles 1 and 2 are connected to humidity sensors that are put into the soil of our plants. Our cloud is set up to collect data and form graphs of the humidity levels in the soil of the plants. Our project was inspired by engman. We have added a link to his project down below. His project was xenon based, but ours is argon. So we had to change our codes to work with argon instead of xenon.

To get data on humidity levels, we created a Thingispeak humidity channel that grabs humidity levels from both plants. Yellow represents when you have less water in your soil and red represents when you have too much water in your plants. When its green, this means your plants are in good shape.

Humidity level data.

This picture shows the set up for the plant. We would highly recommend to have mobile powering system to avoid having a computer next to the plants.

Working Plant Sensor

We have also taken the time to create a short video on what and the humidity sensor functionality.

Please feel free to reach out if you have any questions. Thank you.

Code

void argontwo(const char *event, const char *data){
    
    Particle.publish("plantStatus_percentage_two", "gotit", PRIVATE);
    delay(500);
    Particle.publish("moisture", data, PRIVATE);
    delay(500);
    
}
    
void argonone(const char *event, const char *data){
    
    Particle.publish("plantStatus_percentage_one", "gotit", PRIVATE);
    delay(500);
    Particle.publish("moisture", data, PRIVATE);
    delay(500);
    
}

void setup() {
}

void loop() {

    Particle.subscribe("plantStatus_percentage_two", argontwo, MY_DEVICES);
    
    Particle.subscribe("plantStatus_percentage_one", argonone, MY_DEVICES);

}

void res(const char *event, const char *data){

    if (strcmp(data, "gotit")==0){
        digitalWrite(D7, HIGH);
        delay(500);
        digitalWrite(D7,LOW);
        delay(500);
    }
    
}

int moisture_pin = A1;

void setup() {

    pinMode(D7, OUTPUT); 
    pinMode(moisture_pin, INPUT);  
    
}

void loop() {
    
    int moisture_analog = analogRead(moisture_pin); 

    float moisture_percentage = (100 - ((moisture_analog/4095.00) * 100));

    Particle.publish("plantStatus_percentage_one", String(moisture_percentage), PRIVATE);
    delay(2000);
    Particle.subscribe("plantStatus_percentage_one", res, MY_DEVICES);

}