The sys admin's daily grind — PomodoPi
Green Garden
Charly starts the tomato and dill season aboveground with a traffic light and underground with a soaker hose, along with assistance from two gardeners and the ubiquitous Raspberry Pi board.
Truth be told, I have ignored my garden for the past 15 years. This year, however, I set myself the task of growing my own tomatoes and herbs, and I wrote on Twitter about possible technical support for my green thumb. This was duly noted by gardeners Vanessa Giese and Pia Reichert in their blog [1]. Shortly thereafter, I was a guest author for the "Garden Nerds" column.
My first step was to plan automatic irrigation. My daily bread as a sys admin is to automate routine tasks with bits of technology, so I searched and found a soldering iron and tied a capacitive humidity sensor up to an A/D convertor using a Raspberry Pi. This setup provides me with data about the soil moisture in the plant pot every minute [2].
My Raspberry-to-garden adapter forms the second phase: I have a short hose running from the faucet in the garden to a solenoid valve. While the Raspberry Pi has 12 volts at its terminals, it lets water through, which flows into a perforated hose that I have looped through my raised bed. The tomatoes will put down roots there as soon as the danger of frost is over. When I wrote this article, however, they were enjoying their winter quarters in my living room (Figure 1).
Floral Lights
Because I am still watering manually, I need something to remind me to do it – a traffic light that is about 40cm tal [3] for the USB port. The control software called "Clewarecontrol" can be found online [4]. I have programmed it so that the traffic light is green when the soil moisture is greater than 65 percent, yellow between 55 and 65 percent, and red if the moisture level falls below that – the plants have survived so far.
The last phase of the project is, provisionally, a webcam to watch the plants. I am using the one from the Raspberry Pi Foundation without the infrared filter, which comes with a blue filter foil. Photosynthesis activity can be detected in this spectrum range based on the brightness distribution, which is something I learned from NASA [5].
I have documented the details of my project in an ongoing series of articles [6] on the gardeners' blog. If the traffic lights give me an evening off, I would be grateful for posts from other garden nerds.
Infos
- Gardeners' blog: http://gaertnerinnenblog.de (in German)
- Soil moisture progression from Charly's plant cultivation: http://kuehnast.com/pomodopi (in German)
- Cleware USB traffic light: http://www.cleware-shop.de/en_US
- Clewarecontrol: http://vanheusden.com/clewarecontrol
- The Landsat Program: http://landsat.gsfc.nasa.gov
- Charly's article: http://charly.in/pomodopi (in German)
Buy this article as PDF
(incl. VAT)
Buy Linux Magazine
Subscribe to our Linux Newsletters
Find Linux and Open Source Jobs
Subscribe to our ADMIN Newsletters
Support Our Work
Linux Magazine content is made possible with support from readers like you. Please consider contributing when you’ve found an article to be beneficial.
News
-
Canonical Bumps LTS Support to 12 years
If you're worried that your Ubuntu LTS release won't be supported long enough to last, Canonical has a surprise for you in the form of 12 years of security coverage.
-
Fedora 40 Beta Released Soon
With the official release of Fedora 40 coming in April, it's almost time to download the beta and see what's new.
-
New Pentesting Distribution to Compete with Kali Linux
SnoopGod is now available for your testing needs
-
Juno Computers Launches Another Linux Laptop
If you're looking for a powerhouse laptop that runs Ubuntu, the Juno Computers Neptune 17 v6 should be on your radar.
-
ZorinOS 17.1 Released, Includes Improved Windows App Support
If you need or desire to run Windows applications on Linux, there's one distribution intent on making that easier for you and its new release further improves that feature.
-
Linux Market Share Surpasses 4% for the First Time
Look out Windows and macOS, Linux is on the rise and has even topped ChromeOS to become the fourth most widely used OS around the globe.
-
KDE’s Plasma 6 Officially Available
KDE’s Plasma 6.0 "Megarelease" has happened, and it's brimming with new features, polish, and performance.
-
Latest Version of Tails Unleashed
Tails 6.0 is based on Debian 12 and includes GNOME 43.
-
KDE Announces New Slimbook V with Plenty of Power and KDE’s Plasma 6
If you're a fan of KDE Plasma, you'll be thrilled to hear they've announced a new Slimbook with an AMD CPU and the latest version of KDE Plasma desktop.
-
Monthly Sponsorship Includes Early Access to elementary OS 8
If you want to get a glimpse of what's in the pipeline for elementary OS 8, just set up a monthly sponsorship to help fund its continued existence.