Hydroponics system controlled by Raspberry Pi an overview

Last couple of weeks I was spending my free time to understand and building a Hydroponic system to grow vegetables in my Apartment’s Balcony. I just don’t want to build a normal system that controlled by a timer, instead I want to build a system that I should be able to monitor even I am not at home, change watering schedule using my mobile device.

Before we jump into details, let me give you a brief about Hydroponic.

What is Hydroponics?

In simple terms, hydroponic is a system where you can grow vegetables without soil, mix the required nutrients in water and feed directly to plants. Advantage of this system is, we are feeding plants what they want, instead plant hunting for the nutrients from soil. Also less consumption of water as we reuse the water.

If you search in google you will get more details of Hydroponics. I am working on a subset of Hydroponic called Aeroponics, where plants grow vertically. I made the vertical growing tower based on the method described by Gunnar Shaffer.

Any Hydroponic system needs water circulation using a water pump, I used a submersible pump bought from Ebay for 225.00 INR. This pump should pump water in a periodical manner, say water for 15 mins then sleep for 60 mins and the cycle continues. We can use a timer to do that, it will cost from 1500 – 2500 INR. I decided to use one of the Raspberry pi lying in my table.

Why Raspberry pi?

As a programmer, this small brilliant device give me the flexibility of controlling the system with the programming language of my choice. For this system I used Node js platform to build the controller system. I spent a night to build the basic system that can turn on/off any device in a specific interval and some REST api’s through which mobile device can interact. Later I spent several nights to polish and enhancing my system.

For my testing I used a breadboard to turn off/on one LED. After I successfully controlled the LED, it’s the time to control the Electrical motor. I bought a 12v single channel Relay from ebay for 99.00 INR. It can control one electrical device, in my case the submersible water pump. This post will give you an idea about how to connect the Relay to your Raspberry pi.

Mobile Application

After I completed the system running in Raspberry pi, I decided to write the application for the mobile device. Through which I can interact with the system. As of now the application can

Turn off the pump, in case of maintenance.
Schedule watering interval.
Turn on motor to water immediately.

The mobile application is written using Cordova platform, so that app can run on my Windows or Android devices.

What Next?

The basic infrastructure is done, next important step is start growing veggies. It got delayed because I am waiting for two meters to measure the water content. The pH and TDS meter.
Suggestion system for nutrient quantity based on the previous data.
Distributed cluster of Pi based Aeroponics blocks controlled by a server.
Connect Water level monitor to Rasp pi and notify if water level of the tank goes down.

Update: see my hydroponic in action.

Thanks to

My wife, for her support and encouragement, for all the crazy stuffs that I am experimenting with.
My father who guides and clarifies all my question related to Electrical devices and suggestions to improve the system for better performance.
Gardenguru for providing me with key information like measuring and controlling ph and EC level. I also bought the necessary items from them like Net Cups, Hydrotons, Nutrients, etc. They have a shop near to my home, I go there and spent time talking with them. They are very enthusiastic and provide with any info about Hydroponic to a newbie like me.

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Written by Sony Arouje

November 10, 2014 at 1:21 pm

Posted in Raspberry Pi

Tagged with Aeroponics, Hydroponics

19 Responses

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[…] couple of weeks I was building a Hydroponic system controlled by Raspberry pi. As of yesterday night my system was based on a single Raspberry pi that control one or more water […]

Distributed Raspberry pi based Hydroponic Controller | Sony Arouje Blog

November 22, 2014 at 5:37 pm

Reply
thanks for the advice for the Hydroponic Application and very nice blog.

hydroponicsperth

December 17, 2014 at 11:27 am

Reply
- Thanks Hydroponic Express, I am just a newbie in Hydroponics.
  
  Regards,
  Sony
  
  Sony Arouje
  
  December 17, 2014 at 11:58 am
  
  Reply
[…] one of my previous post I explained about how I used Rasberry pi to control the motor. If you haven’t read it, please […]

Working of my very basic and crude Aeroponic System | Sony Arouje Blog

December 17, 2014 at 1:53 pm

Reply
[…] client will switch on/off the motor via a relay. Also I don’t need to setup a wifi network in my controller […]

Connecting XBee to Raspberry pi | Sony Arouje Blog

December 22, 2014 at 11:41 am

Reply
Can I see the code.

Anonymous

January 29, 2015 at 2:12 am

Reply
that’s some pretty awesome stuff, I mean we use timers of course but this takes growing ease to a whole new level, nice work!

HydroponicGrowBoxes

April 5, 2015 at 11:32 pm

Reply
- Thanks for your comments. Here is the updated version of my Aeroponic, it has 6 pillars and more features.
  
  https://sonyarouje.com/2015/03/15/raspberry-pi-controlled-aeroponic-system-v2/
  
  Sony Arouje
  
  April 6, 2015 at 8:06 am
  
  Reply
where did you buy your tds meter for the raspberry.. thanks for your info and post ppl like you inspire us all

matt

June 30, 2015 at 10:49 pm

Reply
- Hi Matt,
  I use a manual TDS meter. The probes that can connect to Raspberry pi is a bit costly for me.
  
  Regards,
  Sony Arouje
  
  Sony Arouje
  
  July 1, 2015 at 12:01 am
  
  Reply
  - Would you mind to give tutorial connecting TDS meter to rasp..
    
    Adit On IOs
    
    July 1, 2015 at 2:10 pm
  - Hi Adit,
    I dont have a TDS prob to connect to RPi, so coming with a tutorial without having a prob will be difficult.
    
    Regards,
    Sony Arouje
    
    Sony Arouje
    
    July 1, 2015 at 2:52 pm
  - http://www.ebay.ca/itm/141590191908?_trksid=p2060353.m2763.l2649&ssPageName=STRK%3AMEBIDX%3AIT
    
    he sold one to me for almost ten off list price
    
    that is the meter I thinking on using.. did you use noobs for controlling relays and ph readings .. could you send me any helpful links you have I am so new at all this I have a bunch of sensor and relays no raspberry should have been here 2 weeks ago
    
    matt
    
    July 3, 2015 at 12:55 am
  - Hi Matt,
    I am not sure whether the probe can connect to your RPI and take readings. They said in the description that “It outputs only chemical signal (Conductance AC sine wave) to your controller/meter/tester. It does not output electrical signal”. RPi can read only Electrical inputs from the GPIO. I might be wrong there will be some way to get the readings to your RPi.
    
    I haven’t used Noobs, I directly installed Raspbian. For Automating my Aeroponics I developed the system in Node js. You can see my new version of Aeroponics here https://sonyarouje.com/2015/03/15/raspberry-pi-controlled-aeroponic-system-v2/.
    
    Regards,
    Sony Arouje
    
    Sony Arouje
    
    July 3, 2015 at 11:48 am
  - http://www.mathworks.com/help/supportpkg/raspberrypiio/ug/use-the-serial-interface-on-raspberry-pi-hardware.html.. this link Shows the location of the Tx and Rx pins, GPIO 14 (UART0_TXD) and GPIO 15 (UART0_RXD), on the GPIO header. tx and rx is the BNC. witch im going to connect this piece –
    http://www.ebay.ca/itm/391074342244?_trksid=p2060353.m2749.l2649&ssPageName=STRK%3AMEBIDX%3AIT – to raspberry and then to probe … thanks for always responding you’re awesome thanks man!! and sorry I am not a better writer
    
    matt
    
    July 3, 2015 at 6:47 pm
  - Thanks Matt, yes if the probe can do serial communication then yes it can connect to RPi. But make sure you release the serial port for external use, by default it’s assigned to Console I/O, just refer this post to know how to use the serial port for external programming http://www.hobbytronics.co.uk/raspberry-pi-serial-port. I followed the same approach to connect a XBee to my RPi, check this post https://sonyarouje.com/2014/12/20/connecting-xbee-to-raspberry-pi/
    
    Regards,
    Sony
    
    Sony Arouje
    
    July 3, 2015 at 7:13 pm
and that link helped cant wait till I have something similar to you 🙂

matt smith

July 3, 2015 at 6:50 pm

Reply
Thank you you’re awesome thanks for helping me out.. have another question for you since you no a lot and im a total newb. when I finally get my RPi when I connect a sensor: like a humidity, temperature, PH,TDS etc. does the RPi know what it is or do I have to tell it what sensor I am connecting.. and been googling how set perimeter like to turn on and off a relay at certain thing like temp ph humidity

matt smith

July 4, 2015 at 1:39 am

Reply
- Hi Matt,
  RPi will not know what you are connecting to it. Most of the sensors will talk via serial port. So you need to find out how to connect your sensors and to what kind of pins, Digital or Serial.
  
  Regards,
  Sony
  
  Sony Arouje
  
  July 6, 2015 at 3:49 pm
  
  Reply