Social Plant Survival Kit

RE: Social Plant Survival Kit

three-phase — Wed, 11 Apr 2018 18:30:41 GMT

Great update, good to see the positive progress being made.

Kind regards

RE: Social Plant Survival Kit

14rhb — Mon, 09 Apr 2018 03:46:45 GMT

A nice update - thanks.

RE: Social Plant Survival Kit

14rhb — Fri, 30 Mar 2018 07:52:59 GMT

Mehmet,

I like your thinking on this project that it is an aid to plant care rather than doing it for you completely. When the pot is really dry you could flash the cloud white (e.g. 'I need a thunder storm worth of rain !" )

If you didn't already know, once Primroses have flowered you can pinch off any dead flowers to prolong the flowering period but eventually they stop for that season. Don't over water as you can rot the roots. Come next spring it should pop back into flower. It would also probably appreciate some fertiliser after all the hard work of flowering.

Rod

RE: Social Plant Survival Kit

tariq.ahmad — Fri, 30 Mar 2018 04:52:09 GMT

Really cool project!

RE: Social Plant Survival Kit

mcb1 — Fri, 30 Mar 2018 03:11:40 GMT

she is not very healthy now Flowers are dried before they blossom but leaves are still green.

I'm not a gardener, but the leaves appear to also be showing signs of dehydration despite the green colour.

You might also want to check if the plant is happy to live in direct sunlight, bearing in mind it's behind glass and it looks like it could get very warm.

Thanks [mention:5113eb164b024bb2b527087f480871a9:e9ed411860ed4f2ba0265705b8793d05] for adding me into this, and the reference to the four steps.

[mention:9e1d9b462d2f4d20a720e58a9607b3ea:e9ed411860ed4f2ba0265705b8793d05]

IMO your approach to the problem is on the right track. You've identified there is an issue and it needs to be rectified.

You have also indicated one of your own goals " ... because I want to look after the plant ..."

Many of the systems I've seen have some failure, which tends to cause bigger problems.

The valve that controls it get stuck on, so it floods the plant and the surrounding area (and it's not just water at that point)

Valves can fail but software can also fail either due to the program or a power glitch, so this needs to be considered.

My approach would be to have a small container that provides water to the plant (enough that the plant/container could happily take in a single watering each day) and provide an overflow that can safely dump the water outside, or back to the start point.

This small container has two level detectors which signal the software to start filling when the low level is triggered, and shuts off when it reaches the high level.

Relays do get stuck especially when driving inductive loads like solenoids, so the fail safe system should interrupt power that these relays switch and could be a mechanical trip, or something not under software control.

Fail to Safety

The above might sound over complicated, but in each Engineering Solution you should be designing for "fail to safety" or in this case "Fail to Dry".

This means control signals are held low and if the wire breaks it goes into the alarm state.

Your level detectors should be wired so that if the wires are broken/disconnected nothing happens, while the Fail Safe should be connected that it will trip/operate if a wire breaks/disconnects.

You might also want to consider what happens during the boot up.

Is there a possibility it will start watering or filling up because the outputs aren't set by the OS, and your SD card somehow corrupted when the power dropped.

Good luck

Mark

RE: Social Plant Survival Kit

three-phase — Thu, 29 Mar 2018 20:56:03 GMT

An interesting project for you to work on, good luck with working out solution. Take a look at [mention:8fb233e8974445138ef0af2b63b49f94:e9ed411860ed4f2ba0265705b8793d05] four steps on engineering solutions that may help you think about your project.

mcb1's electronic diet blog

Kind regards

RE: Social Plant Survival Kit

genebren — Wed, 28 Mar 2018 14:32:39 GMT

Good luck on your watering project. Hopefully you will be able to come up with a clever device that will be able to care for your plant when you are away.

Gene