Greenhouse

[jrieghley]

I would like the greenhouse to make gardening possible for as much of the year as is feasible in Spokane.

I suspect my main "Goal" however was to have a platform to tinker with.. For me, The problem solving is a lot more fun than the problem itself.. I hope to have the arduino/pi doing most of the "Gardening" along with my wife and kids..

Left on the agenda so far

Door.

Install additional temp sensors - one underground to measure the heat sink.. one to measure outside temp - one to measure Aquaponics tank temp.. I am using the $1.50 ones from Sparkfun.. Each uses one analog input on the Arduino.

Humidity sensor (haven't ordered one yet)

Vent controls. My crazy plan here is to weight the windows to naturally want to swing open. I will use a counterweight to hold them closed.. When it gets too hot or humid, I am going to use a servo to redirect already pumping water into a upside down bottle with a slow leak to provide a counterweight to the counterweight, causing the windows to open. when it cools enough I will redirect the flow bypassing the bottle, the bottle will leak it's weight out and the windows should close again..

Photo-sensor -- would like to be able to guess how much light the plants have been getting - weather it is overcast etc.. Perhaps trigger on supplemental lighting to compensate for short days or clouds.

Rasbperry pi -- I plan to hook to the arduino via USB cable and have it query for a listing of the variables every 6 minute or so -- should be able to build graphs and correlations etc from the compiled data. I pan to build a web interface so I can look at a glance and see what the greenhouse is doing...