New Kickstarter – Smart Garden System – Raspberry Pi

October 10, 2018 Featured Topic, Grove, Grove Sensors, IOT, Kickstarter, Lightning, Projects, Raspberry Pi, SwitchDoc Products, Thunder Board

New Kickstarter – Smart Garden System – Raspberry Pismart garden system

The Raspberry Pi Smart Garden System Kickstarter has launched
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SGS – A Raspberry Pi based smart watering system kit for Makers, advanced kids and adults. Learn while you grow! No soldering needed!

The Smart Garden System (or SGS for short) is an introductory, easy to build Raspberry Pi based environmental monitoring and plant watering system using advanced sensors to monitor the soil moisture, monitor the sunlight, watch the air quality and monitor temperature and humidity.

It is designed to be easily and simply put together and tested with No Soldering Required!

And you get all the source code for the Smart Garden System software so you can do what you want.   Modify the code to your own application!  Add sensors!  Add functions!  Add more plants!

Quick Demo of the Prototype Raspberry Pi Smart Garden System

What Will You Learn with Raspberry Pi Smart Garden System?

The educational goals for Smart Garden are:

  • Learn about the Raspberry Pi and installing software on the Pi
  • Connecting up sensors to the Raspberry Pi
  • Learning about Feedback loops and regulating water to plants
  • Understand your indoor environment and what affects it
  • Learn about the new technology called the Internet of Thingssmart garden system

What is in the Kit?

  • SI1145 Sunlight/IR/UV Sensor
  • 8 Pixel RGBW Strip
  • Sensitive Grove  Air Quality Sensor
  • 4 Channel 16 bit Analog to Digital Connverter
  • HDC1080 Indoor Temperature and Humidity Sensor
  • Grove OLED 128×64 Display
  • Grove Ultrasonic Sensor
  • 8  20cm Grove Cables
  • 1 50cm Grove Cable
  • USB PowerControl NE Solid State Really
  • Capacitive Moisture Sensor
  • USB Activated Pump
  • Hose 200mm, Clip for hose
  • 3D Printed Ultrasonic holder
  • 3D Printed SGS Stand

And in some rewards:

  • Raspberry Pi 3B+
  • 5V 2.5A Power Supply
  • Nylon standoff kit
  • Fully Pre-loaded SD Card for the Raspberry Pi 3B+ with Stretch, SGS and more

In the SGS Extender Kits:

  • SGS 4 Plant Extender Board (with built in USB Pump Controls and Analog to Digital Converter)
  • Four USB Controlled  Pumps
  • Four Capacitive Moisture Sensors
  • 5V Power Supply
  • 5 50cm Grove Cables
  • 800mm Hose, 4 Hose Clips
  • 3D Printed SGS Extender Stand

 

What is a Grove Connector?

The way we have been wiring I2C connections before just didn’t work for building fast and quick IOT projects.  Then we found Grove.

There are hundreds of Grove Devices from multiple manufacturers around the world.     Just for a quick look finds over 100 boards.

You can’t plug it in backwards.   If you put the connector in the wrong plug it just doesn’t work.  No smoke.  No fire. This makes us happy as we look over into our Box Of Death, filled with boards we have ruined.

We quickly found the Grove connectors and their respective cables very useful. With the large selection of Grove I2C devices available, we decided to include a Grove connector on all our future boards and products.

For more information, check out our full Grove Tutorial here.

Coming Next

Next up we talk about how soil moisture sensors work.