Outdoor Planting Update .....

It has been busy here.  We have been putting up the deer fencing to ensure that we have reduced deer "strikes" on the crops, creating the new drip irrigation system, developing the Garden/Field Node,  planting, and subsequent weeding. So far what has been planted in:

• Peas(50ft)
• Beets(20ft)
• Lettuce(30ft)
• Swiss Chard (20ft)
• Garlic(25ft, planted back in November of 2014)
• Shallots(25ft, planted back in November of 2014)

Here is some random pics from the garden.

Sugar Snap Peas

Lettuce(variety mix)

Gray Shallots

Duganski Hardneck Garlic

I hope to have a few more updates in the very near future.

The Monitor Node Update

Well, the Monitor Node design is in the process of getting upgraded with an integrated humidity sensor and a custom PCB.

The PCBs, a quanity of 3, just showed up from OSH Park today we'll see if it works.  I have also been playing with rough prototype moisture sensor. One that can be deployed will be completed in about 2 weeks after I get the nodes upgraded.

Well, that is it for now.

Monitor Node

We have a working Monitor Node with a temperature sensor that reports to a Mother Node. My buddy Dicky did some really EXCELLENT working on getting these going and implementing some great functionality.  It reports temperature right now. However, it will be expanded with more sensors in the near future. The solar powered Monitor Node is shown below.

Monitor Node

The Mother Node is wirelessly connected to the Monitor Nodes. The Mother Node then connects over wifi to my home network to upload the data to the internet.

Mother node

 The data, temp and voltage levels, from the Monitor Nodes can be seen here and here. I have 2 nodes and Dicky has 2 nodes. See below for some sample temp and voltage plots that were generated.

36 hour temp reading(*NOTE*the drop in Node 1 is moving from the inside our master bathroom to the garage)

Voltage data(*NOTE*, you can tell when the sun rises and the photo-voltaics are going )

My Monitor Node 1 is deployed in the garage and Monitor Node 2 is in field measuring soil temps near the garlic and  shallots.

See below, for Monitor Node 2 getting ready for the outdoors with some AWESOME outdoor water resistant packaging....... a plastic Ziploc container. Yes, that is rice being used as a desiccant, sprinkled very liberally by the way.

Monitor Node getting prepared for the outdoors

A cover and some RTV and we are ready to go!

Deployed  taking soil temps 2" down near the edge of the planted garlic mulch. 

Another deployed pic

Next steps, is to finish 3D printing the external packaging to ditch the awesome Ziploc plastic container. A preliminary go around ended like this. As you can tell it failed spectacularly.  Hopefully, today I will have a portion of the external packaging complete.

Failed external packaging 3D print

The Monitor.......

In light of my broken foot, I have decided to tackle a project of a wireless field monitoring, I am going to start small and focus just on the monitor nodes. However, Figure 1 does so the overall plan including the monitor node, mother node and water solenoid node.

Figure 1: The big plan

The big plan has them all working together. The monitor node reporting the health of the field to the mother node. The mother node making the decision that affect the field such as irrigation based on the monitor node(s) reported information and external weather related data.  The mother node would then communicate to the water solenoid node to open or close as needed.

 Show in Figure 2 below, is the monitor node which will have the following sensors to report key field parameters.

Figure 2: Monitor node diagram

• Light intensity sensor
• Air temp sensor
• Soil temp sensor
• Soil moisture sensor 

The monitor will also have the ability to communicate wirelessly. Ultimately, the wireless connectivity will be used to communicate to other nodes and to a mother node. The input list that was previously posted is for the monitor node. That will have another revision coming fairly soon.

I will be crafting the the soil moisture sensor first, followed by the soil temp node, air temp node, and light intensity node.