green house project resouces?

Hi guys,

Our group has a simple project involving 3 sensors and a PIC. The sensors will be a temp, humidity, and light. The solar sensor we are using is just a solar panel that supposedly recharges your battery when you plug it in to the power outlet in your car. We checked it and it still works so we are in business there. As for the other two we will need to purchase inexpensive ones or we have seen or even the two sensors in one unit. The outputs will just go to transistors or relays to run a fan, pump, and two dc motors. This is a scaled down version of a green house. Has anyone had much experience with temp and humidity code? Or even this type of project in general. Any references would be greatly appreciated. We are having so much fun with this and even though the learning curve is pretty slow we are really learning a lot and it can carry over to other projects. Thanks for any suggestions.

Hi,

I have just about completed my greenhouse controller based on my old Aquarium controller - some pictures below.

I've used various sensors for accurate temperature such as the humble ntc or the more fancy DS18B20 digital sensor.
( have bought steel encased DS18B20 sensors from Sure Electronics )

The very accurate SHT11 sensors from Sensiron will do both temp and humidity but they are expensive to replace when you damage one as I did!

Look at the much cheaper DTH11 and DHT22 sensors coming out from the far east.
They do both temp and hum but are not mega accurate, though good enough for ordinary greenhouse use.

Its also got several timers for lights and auto watering etc.

Do not use a solar panel, but do have a USB link into the house so I can monitor things.
Have also used the cheap RF transmitters to do the same thing.

Expect you are coding in C so cannot help you there as I use Pic Assembler.

Also have a look at the Arduino site, they have several ready made free greenhouse projects.

xplor said:

Hi guys,

Our group has a simple project involving 3 sensors and a PIC. The sensors will be a temp, humidity, and light. The solar sensor we are using is just a solar panel that supposedly recharges your battery when you plug it in to the power outlet in your car. We checked it and it still works so we are in business there. As for the other two we will need to purchase inexpensive ones or we have seen or even the two sensors in one unit. The outputs will just go to transistors or relays to run a fan, pump, and two dc motors. This is a scaled down version of a green house. Has anyone had much experience with temp and humidity code? Or even this type of project in general. Any references would be greatly appreciated. We are having so much fun with this and even though the learning curve is pretty slow we are really learning a lot and it can carry over to other projects. Thanks for any suggestions.

Click to expand...

Growing plants never cease to amaze me. They have huge genomes but very few specialized structures compared to animals. Think about the implications.

Anyway, read up on plant physiology. It is not just light intensity, but duration that affects their growth phases. While you are at it, read up on circadian rhythms. Here is a link to get you started: Plant physiology - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

John

wow thanks wp100!!

That looks like a big help.
It is funny, this is actually an important project, but doubt it will ever see any action in growing plants.
This morning we decided to simplify and go from an "air humidity" sensor to a soil moisture sensor.
The temperature sensor suggestions sound great.
We will keep on the look out for some successful code examples.

Appreciate your time guys!