When it comes to working the bugs out there is many things to think of first we have hardware related bugs things that won't work and then software issues where things wont work with what we have installed for hardware. This can sometimes be challenging when using something like software that has been created by someone else where one could make a more simple setup work just as efficient but we have to consider time and resources and what is needed to be done to complete and get things going and be efficient enough to forward the project.
Lets start off with the a few of the elephants in the room.
What is a system without watering? well you would be manually water or injecting water into the system which will pose as a extra element you would have to manually control which is not the reason for the project we want something efficient enough to be able to do as much as possible so we don't have to so we can concentrate on other projects and things that might need to be taken care of.
With that being said the first issue I had was I had everything wired up and ready to go software was installed and time to run my first bit of water through the system. Using the 4 switch water relay (actually just air) I noticed sufficient water droppings forming around the unit and then it started to pour out there was little time to act so shutting it off I managed to get everything cleaned up and it was back to the drawing board.
Frustration levels where getting high at this point as I so wanted it to work but it wasn't going to happen.
So its time to adjust the valve swapping it out for a single valve instead of the 4 output valve I had to adjust my system to accommodate the change. How was I going to water the system evenly? well I opted for drip watering system so I could control the holes and flow amount over time. later on a soil moisture meter will be added to monitor each tray.
I had the trays all sealed up and things where good. Water was flowing and any leaks that were in my line were now resolved.
But I wasn't happy it really isn't the system I initially imagined in my head. Things were starting to be more and more off course.
At this point I had to forfeit my top growing area due to now only having the one zone available on my valve relay. which will later be revised I am sure to get it going as I would love to be able to grow strawberries and other items that would hang down in the enclosure. At this point I would have been better of just making a 8 tray dual layer enclosure but then I would require more lighting adding more wattage to the system. Trying to keep the overall working wattage down was my main concern. Having the ability to be able to in the future run the system off a small solar setup is the ultimate goal. Running and monitoring power consumption throughout the process was one of the main things I wanted to address going forward.
Carrying on with watering issues now the next thing that will have to be addressed in the future will have to be the watering pump. Currently I need gravity to help force water down and into the pump as it wasn't strong enough to pump from below the the pump.
So initially I did have some water leaking from the green quick connect on the unit but that was resolved with a change in washer on the inside of it which was not tight enough to provide an decent seal on the unit. So for now until I come up with either a design change or add on a better pump I will have to settle for this being the solution for now which is working but once again not ideal.
When it comes to the software there was some issues and most of the issues I had with the unit was due to the software not having or me not finding the correct settings to be able to accomplish what I set out to do. Now that doesn't mean it isn't doable it just means due to the time that it would take to do what I have set out to do it isn't accomplish-able. But further testing and figuring out in the future will probably produce better results. Once again I will at some point create my own dashboard to make things work as I intended them to.
One of the things that jumped out at me was the ability to add the sensors that I required as this is set out for a terrarium and what most are using it for are completely different then what I have set out to do. The major thing was the flow sensor that wouldn't be usable which I was hoping to be able to have it so that I would be able to start with a set amount of water in the container and be able to adjust it to give me low water warning levels once a certain amount of water has been used in the container.
But we will keep it hooked up as I want to revisit that sooner then later to be able to get that going as it will help with the future automation of the unit. I was thinking of an actual water level meter or even a simple floating rod system on the unit but I feel it would be more fun to get it to work with the water flow meter. But we will see what happens.
Now in the next while I am sure there will be more stuff added to all the pages that I have done as there will be some updates and progress reports that I would like to be able to share with my experience with this as the duration of this design challenge is good but not for that of the growing time of plants.
Trying to keep costs down and the ability to be able to make this as cheap as possible and make it basically anywhere was the main goals of the project weather it be in space or on earth or anywhere. Low cost, low power for the win in my books.
All 3d printed parts can be found here:
https://www.thingiverse.com/thing:4644039