Arduino Plant Watering

A Real Time Clock controlled water pump regulator, for watering your plants. The LCD have four available states:

• Initial state: Shows the time and how many times the pump has ran
• Pump configuration: Configure how many seconds the pump will run
• Schedule configuration: Enable/disable the timer
• Alarm configuration: Configure the time between each watering (can be every minute; a specific minute every hour; or a specific time each day).

The internal software is using a mixture of the RTC module and AVR's Watchdog Timer to properly time the pump and the schedule. A float switch is also connected to the circuit, allowing the pump to run if there is enough water. It will also cut-off the pump as soon as float switch turns off.

The power supply is a 12v wall-wart that's fused with 50mA to Arduino and 5A to the pump.

The three buttons are regulated at 0V, 1V and 2V, and read using A0. The switches are debounced in software.

Hardware

• 12V relay module
• Water hose
• Windshield washer pump
• 12V power supply
• 16x2 LCD
• DS3231 RTC module (or similar)
• Float switch

Additional

• Resistors
• Wires
• LEDs
• A switch button
• Free time.

Future improvements

• Flowmeter: Configure the amount of water your want to be pumped, instead of pump time
• Hardware debouncing of buttons
• Noise reducing of water pump when it's active
• Status LEDs
• Bluetooth / integration with the nRF51 kit by Nordic Semiconductor.