Make your own automated vertical hydroponic garden with Raspberry Pi and Arduino. via instructables
We call our project RUFS, for Robotic Urban Farm System
• A vertical hydroponic garden
• Allowing for high density yields and shorter growth cycles
• Reducing resource consumption – water, fertilizer and space
• Labor saving – no weeds or soil to till
• Higher consistency of crops with great tasting results
• Maintained by micro-controllers (Raspberry Pi & Arduino)
• Watering cycles – monitor and auto refill levels
• Plant nutrients and pH – monitor and correct
• Temperature monitoring
• Air Circulation & Lighting controls (for indoor operation)
• Smart and Connected
• Farm Controller App for smartphone, tablet and pc
• Get notified when the system needs a refill
• Alerts when something isn’t running as expected
• Year round growing – fresh produce every month of the year
• Perfect for Urban setting with limited space
• Reduced operational time and maintenance with automation
• Eliminate the guesswork of nutrients and watering cycles
Green and Efficient
Water is recirculated which allows for great efficiency, often more than 90% efficiently on water consumption.
Our vertical design allows for a higher density of plants in a much smaller footprint. With a space less than 5′ x 5′ we are growing 160 plants.
Automation
The system is maintained with a series of Arduino controllers. Watering cycles, pH levels, nutrient levels, lighting cycles and ventilation fans are all maintained via the Arduino’s. The Arduino’s can be networked to a Raspberry Pi using I2C to allow all system parameters to be monitored and updated in real time. The Raspberry Pi is further used to maintain a historical log of all the systems running data and make it available via a set if web services. A companion smartphone/tablet app interfaces with the Raspberry Pi allowing for configuring and monitoring your entire system from anywhere in the world. The Raspberry Pi communicates with app via a JSON web service. The steps are outlined here, additional project information including plant suggestions and updates are available on our website at http://www.bltrobotics.com/
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