Arduino Smart Garden Project Finished - Thank You Adafruit

[czuvich]

After 2 years, I have finally completed the Greenclay LoRaWAN Smart Garden project!  I am now able to monitor and manage my outdoor garden using LoRaWAN with an Arduino programmed microcontroller.  I have developed a complete package which includes a dev kit, garden controller, and mobile app.  

I am a software engineer by trade; however, I wanted to build a better garden that could scale in my backyard. I embarked on my hardware journey and 2 years later I finally finished the project. I wanted to personally say Thank You to Adafruit for providing open source hardware and software and excellent customer help. I built several prototypes using the nRF52840 Adafruit Express and various other hardware components. I now have my own custom Arduino which I can use as a core LoRaWAN board to add more functionality to my homestead besides garden control.

Here are some technical details on the hardware:

• Power consumptions is around 1.6uA in deep sleep
  Powered by a single AA LiFePO4 battery with solar replenishment
  No regulator needed since the LiFePO4 provides a nominal voltage of 3.2V
  Arduino compatible for the nRF52840 which comes with integrated BLE
  10 GPIO pins and all standard Arduino outputs
  5V regulator with SHDN for interfacing with 5V devices
  Vertical USB for easier debugging and field servicing
  Fits perfectly in the WP-28F outdoor enclosure from Polycase with room for external connections and daughter boards

The dev kit is essentially designed to run outdoors where low power is needed.  I've been running it the backyard for several months and it has been running great!
What you see in the backyard picture are 5 of my kits integrated with my Garden Controller daughter board.  The Garden Controller does the following:

• Monitors soil moisture and soil temperature
  Accurately measures water flow and consumption via pulse input from a water meter
  Controls a latching solenoid water valve

Data updates are currently set at 20 minutes and the batteries are still at 100% for the last 5 months.  I expect several years of battery life from the project.  I also have a mobile app, but I figured the forum would be more interested in the hardware :)  

I developed and designed the entire system myself in spare time, so I had a lot to learn.  Thanks for looking and feedback welcome!

Core Board

IMG_2221.JPG (164.77 KiB) Viewed 1669 times

Daughter Board

IMG_2224.JPG (139.29 KiB) Viewed 1669 times

Enclosure

IMG_2229.JPG (167.83 KiB) Viewed 1669 times

[czuvich]

More pictures

My Backyard

IMG_2212.JPG (269.58 KiB) Viewed 1668 times

The First Harvest

IMG_2208.JPG (126.69 KiB) Viewed 1668 times

[Franklin97355]

Great job. I'll let the team know about this.

[czuvich]

Great job. I'll let the team know about this.

Thank you!!

[pnoshawn]

Cool Project. What moisture temperature probe did you use?

[czuvich]

Cool Project. What moisture temperature probe did you use?

Thanks! I used the Vegetronix VH400. I also have a Soil Watch 10.

[NewYork]

What a great project. Is your code open source? Just getting into LoRawan and cannot find a lot of sample code especially for sending input to nodes. My interest in composting.

[czuvich]

Thanks NewYork! My project is not open source. It's fairly large in scope (nodes, mobile app, backend). I'm happy to help though in regards to your project. Feel free to post here or PM me directly. I started with LoRaWAN simply using the included examples for uplinks and downlinks. For uplinks and downlinks, try to keep your data size compact (binary encoding not ASCII for example), and make sure you're in compliance with your network provider (TTN for example has a Fair Use policy which restricts daily downlinks).