Gardening and electronics make an excellent fit, and what better way to get started than with desktop gardens? They’re compact, easy to make, and the ideal way to put your Arduino or Raspberry Pi to use, which includes accessing https://casinocentral.co.za/. You can keep it basic by connecting some LED grow lights, or you can add moisture sensors and automatic watering.
- Raspberry Pi Desktop Garden
This desktop garden is contained in an amazing wooden building constructed of laser-cut plywood. If you wish to use this design for your own urban garden, you can download the file from the creator’s Instructables page.
This setup, known as Plantbot, uses a Raspberry Pi and a Wi-Fi dongle to control LED grow lights. However, if you own a Wi-Fi-enabled device such as the Raspberry Pi 3, 4, Zero W, or Zero 2 W, you can omit the Wi-Fi dongle entirely.
If you want to learn more about how to connect your device to your Wi-Fi network, check out our guide to setting up Wi-Fi on Raspberry Pi at technicaltalk.net or just google some tips.
While many electronic grow systems become sophisticated with sensors and programming, this idea keeps things simple by only wiring LEDs. This makes it an ideal project for new electronic enthusiasts.
- Arduino Smart Desktop Herb Garden
This desktop herb garden is compact, self-contained, and attractive, making it ideal for an apartment or small home. It can hold four little seed pots, which may not seem like much, but it is adequate for cultivating a few herbs for use in the kitchen.
In any event, this is a useful project for learning how to wire fundamental electronic components. The four major components are a 2.8-inch TFT touchscreen, an RTC clock module, four moisture sensors, an LED strip, and a few MOSFET transistors.
These parts allow you to program the display function to adjust the time and duration of the LED lights, as well as indicate your plants’ moisture levels.
A 3D printer is required to recreate the garden building shown in the Instructables guide. Once printed, add some wood veneer to give it a faux wood appearance, and you’ll have a sleek and polished finished product.
- Simple Arduino Plant Watering
A desktop garden can be as simple as connecting a pot plant you currently own to an automatic watering system. This video will lead you through the beginner-friendly process, demonstrating how simple it is.
For this project, you will connect a moisture sensor and a micro pump to an Arduino Uno before generating a short amount of code. Beyond the first setup, you may need to experiment with the moisture sensor’s positioning or calibration to get it just right.
Essentially, the system will pump water into the pot until the moisture sensor reaches a predetermined threshold, indicating that it is sufficiently wet. Keep in mind that this threshold may vary by pot based on how much water your plant requires, as well as changes in soil type and pot size.
- Raspberry Pi Pico Garden
This desktop garden isn’t the prettiest, but it makes use of inexpensive secondhand pieces. In this scenario, a fish tank is used to house the plants, and a plastic bottle serves as the water tank.
You can read the instructions, which includes a complete components list, on the blog Ctrl Alt Develop. The component list appears to be lengthy, but around half of it is optional, so read the notes carefully. If you want something that will automatically execute watering and lighting cycles, look into the available code.
- Easy Arduino Automatic Watering System
This automatic watering system for your desktop garden is as straightforward as it gets. With relatively few parts, you can be up and running in 30 minutes. It’s an ideal project for lazy gardeners.
This article uses an Adafruit Trinket Pro board, but you can use an Arduino instead. Plastic tubing, a small air pump, a soil hygrometer, and a water-filled plastic container are among the components. The Trinket/Arduino is used to turn on and off the pump based on soil hygrometer readings; the code for this function is available on Instructables.
The setup won’t take long, so for an extra challenge, read through the code comments to find ways to improve the system.