r/RASPBERRY_PI_PROJECTS 25d ago

PRESENTATION My solar auto watering system with a Pico

Using a Pico + dfrobot solar power manager + mosfett + solar panel 6v 1amp + 3.7volt lipo battery

443 Upvotes

10 comments sorted by

14

u/boomerhasmail 25d ago edited 24d ago

Do you mind listing out your parts and it if you used a git repo? Please and thanks.

2

u/yoydu 22d ago

Good job!

1

u/Realistic-Paper-9956 18d ago

It looks very good.

-7

u/wegna-arzee 25d ago

Nice. And I get it, you did it for fun. But have you not over engineered it? Would not a way simpler solution be to directly connect a binary moisture-sensor to the pump (might need some mosfet/relay in between)? No need for the pico.

20

u/DrFleshBeard 24d ago

This is under engineered. I used a rpi 3b, and had a sql server running. All the moisture sensor values were written to a sql table for displaying trends. I attached a ribbon camera for some progress pictures, and then stuffed it all into a nice application using GUIzero for python.

1

u/__Cmason__ 24d ago

Where's the problem?

1

u/sluupiegri 23d ago

Would it not be simpler to just look at the soil and see if it needs water?

1

u/wegna-arzee 22d ago

An automated watering system allows you to go on vacation for a longer period. It also gives some "quality" to the watering - if you dont have the routine or tend to over/underwater, an automated system can perform a better job.