With spring just around the corner, it’s never too early to start thinking about planting.
Writing for Popular Mechanics, Alexandra Chang explained why she recently created an open-source, Arduino-powered DIY moisture monitor to ensure that her plants received the optimal living conditions.
“My perennials always died because I watered them too little or too much, or put them somewhere too dark or too hot,” she says. “[So] I vowed to keep my plants alive [and] turned to Arduino. I’d been looking for an excuse to try out this microcontroller platform, which I knew could be programmed to do a lot of cool things. Why not use it to save my ailing amaryllis?”
According to Chang, the project took a single afternoon and resulted in a smart sensor that was capable of reading and displaying soil-moisture levels, light intensity and temperature. For the build, Chang chose an Arduino Uno Starter Kit (ATmega328) which included the following components:
- Solderless…
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Brian By Experience 