Have a Green Thumb with FlowerDuino

FlowerDuino (Flower Power by Parrot hack) monitors and analyzes these four essential parameters for plant health on a Cayenne dashboard.

• Temperature

• Brightness

• Soil moisture

• Humidity

I made this IoT project to be able to get data about my plants 24/7 all around the world - thanks to the Cayenne dashboard & Arduino board.

Inspiration:

Flower Power by Parrot website

• Temperature

• Brightness

• Soil moisture

• Fertilizer

• Bluetooth sync only

• No Windows mobile app or responsive design version

• 6 month battery only

• Water resistant, for indoor and outdoor use

• 3 colors and really nice design

• Doesn't show the soil moisture when watering

• A database of over 7,000 plants

• IFTTT compatible

• Very expensive (+80€)

Flower Power Hack (FlowerDuino)

FlowerDuino: advantages & evolutions

• Live WiFi sync

• Sensor data synchronized in Cayenne dashboard

• Get information about your plants all over the world in mobile / tablet / laptop

• An LED blinks if the soil is dry

• Get the humidity of the room

• No battery required, unlimited battery life

• Cayenne IFTTT like

• Customizable: If tomorrow you want to add a new sensor (barometric, servo, etc.), you can add data to the Cayenne dashboard easily

• Easy connection to your existing Cayenne projects: If you want to turn on/off the FlowerDuino with a 433MHz power outlet controlled by another Arduino board with Cayenne sync, it's no problem to customize existing .ino projects to your home and other IoT projects

• Open source

• Very affordable price

• 100% French DIY

Improvement: FlowerDuino 2.0 (next step)

• Fertilizer? I don't like fertilizers, that's why I didn't want this information. My plants are organic and I don't give fertilizer to my plants. I let nature do the job ^^

• Outdoor protection case

• Improve design / wiring system

• Use a Wemos D1 to save space

• Community pull request implementation

What's Connected

• 1 LED

• 1 Photoresistor (for brightness)

• 1 DHT11 (for temperature + humidity)

• 1 Water sensor (for soil moisture)

• 2 Resistors

• 1 Arduino UNO

• 1 Ethernet shield

• 1 9V external power supply

• Jumpers / Tiny Breadboards

• 1 Arduino case

I made this IoT project with 2 tiny breadboards to minimize space. It's not perfect yet but I optimized the space as much as possible.

• Breadboard #1 used to connect jumpers rather than in Arduino direct connection (inside my Arduino case)

• Breadboard #2 used to connect temperature and humidity sensor + brightness sensor + soil moisture sensor + LED. Put that in the ground and enjoy

Triggers & Alerts

• "I'm cold" trigger: The temperature of the room is below 17 degrees

• "I'm thirsty" trigger: If soil moisture is below 100

• "Too much moisture in the air": Air the room now, too much humidity in the room

From other Cayenne projects:

• "I need light" trigger: Turn on my 433MHz LED strip lamp to have more light in the room for my plant

• "Turn off FlowerDuino" trigger: Turn off my FlowerDuino from 433MHz power outlet if uptime > 500

Scheduling

• "Turn on FlowerDuino" alert: Turn on daily at noon to start receiving data from FlowerDuino to Cayenne

To maximize water sensor service life, FlowerDuino can automatically start and stop enough to have daily data in your Cayenne dashboard. You can override this in the sketch easily.

Dashboard Screenshots

Photos of the Project

Configuration

Update this line with your custom values:

char token[] = "XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX";   // /!\ Enter your Cayenne token here

And create these virtual pins in your Cayenne dashboard:

#define VIRTUAL_PIN_1 V1   //temperature
#define VIRTUAL_PIN_2 V2   //uptime
#define VIRTUAL_PIN_3 V3   //water sensor
#define VIRTUAL_PIN_4 V4   //humidity
#define VIRTUAL_PIN_12 V12 //brightness

Shopping list

• 1 LED = 0.20 €

• 1 Photoresistor (for brightness) = 0.59 €

• 1 DHT11 (for temperature + humidity) = 2.20 €

• 1 Water sensor (for soil moisture) = 2.50 €

• 2 Resistors = 0.20 €

Hardware total price: 5.69 €

• 1 Arduino UNO

• 1 Ethernet shield

• 1 9V external power supply

• Jumpers / Tiny Breadboards

Enable 433MHz power outlets control

I made another Cayenne project fully compatible with FlowerDuino that allows you to get values from your plants every X minutes depending your weather constraints and Cayenne custom user alerts / triggers. Please read my first comment for more information about implementation.