Published May 4, 2016 © GPL3+

To Water, or not to Water??

This sensor will send out email notifications every time your plants need water.

IntermediateFull instructions provided2,656

Things used in this project

Hardware components

SparkFun Soil Moisture Sensor (with Screw Terminals)

Particle Photon

Breadboard (generic)

Jumper wires (generic)

Screw Terminals 3.5mm Pitch (3-Pin)

Resistor 10k ohm

Resistor 221 ohm

LED (generic)

Software apps and online services

IFTTT Particle

Hand tools and fabrication machines

Soldering iron (generic)

Story

My relationship with my plants has never been great. Let's just say they don't really appreciate not being watered. To be honest I always forget to water them in time and most of them decide not to stick around that long. So I decided to do something about it. I created a soil moisture sensor that sends me emails every time my plant needs water, and I even added a reminder email every 30 minutes until the plant gets it.

Email Notification

How it Works

Plant setup

All you have to do is stick the moisture sensor in the soil, make sure it's in there well, connect your photon to a power supply and you're good to go! The sensor will read the soil moisture and when it's time for water you'll get the email.

Setup

Soldering

First, you have to solder the screw terminals on the soil moisture sensor or you could solder the wire connectors directly to the sensor. After that's done, it's time to setup the circuit.

Circuit Setup

Connections:

220Ω resistor -> GND and LED

LEDs -> resistor and pin D0.

10kΩ resistor -> Sensor signal and GND

Soil Moisture sensor:

SIG -> pin A0

VCC -> pin A5

GND -> GND

IFTT Particle

In order to setup the email notifications every time the plant needs water, it has to be connected to IFTTT particle. After you connect your photon to IFTTT you have to create a recipe. I created two recipes for this project, one to notify me when my photon is offline or lost the WiFi connection, and one to notify me when my plant needs water.

My Recipes

Soil Moisture Sensor

//SOIL MOISTURE SENSOR


//Initialize variables and set photon pins

int thresholdUp = 3000; 

int thresholdDown = 350;

int sensorPin = A0;

int LEDs = D0;

int sensorVoltage = A5;



//Set input and outputs, subscribe

void setup(){

 pinMode(sensorPin, INPUT);

 pinMode(LEDs, OUTPUT);

 pinMode(sensorVoltage, OUTPUT);

 Particle.subscribe ("Stefanopoulou453Sensor",sensor);

 digitalWrite(sensorVoltage, HIGH);

    }


// Sensor Readings

void loop()

{

  int sensorValue;

  sensorValue = analogRead(sensorPin);

    if (sensorValue <= thresholdDown){

    digitalWrite(LEDs, HIGH);

    Particle.publish("SoilStatus","Dry! Water me!!",60,PUBLIC);

    delay(5000);

     }

 else if (sensorValue > thresholdUp){

    digitalWrite(LEDs, LOW);

    Particle.publish("SoilStatus", "Too much water!",60,PUBLIC);

     } 

  else {

    digitalWrite(LEDs, LOW);

    Particle.publish("SoilStatus", "No Water Needed!",60, PUBLIC);

  }


  delay(3600000); //checks every hour.

}

}

Credits

Stamatia Stefanopoulou

1 project • 1 follower

UNCC Mechanical Engineering

To Water, or not to Water??

Things used in this project

Hardware components

Software apps and online services

Hand tools and fabrication machines

Story

How it Works

Setup

IFTT Particle

Code

Soil Moisture Sensor

Credits

Stamatia Stefanopoulou

Comments

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To Water, or not to Water??

To Water, or not to Water??

Things used in this project

Hardware components

Software apps and online services

Hand tools and fabrication machines

Story

How it Works

Setup

IFTT Particle

Code

Soil Moisture Sensor

Credits

Stamatia Stefanopoulou

Comments

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