Used ultrasonic sound waves to measure the depth of water in the tank for our houseplant irrigation system. Drilling holes in the little project box attached to the top of the tank resulted in a trip to UrgentCare yesterday. My thumb and my pride are healing well.
Category: Apartment Gardening
Color Pop
While Minneapolis dug out from a snowstorm, our amaryllis provided a pop of color.
The Impossible Takes a Little Longer
Posted The Impossible Takes a Little Longer.
The Impossible Takes a Little Longer
Now that we have our indoor gardens on wheels fully operational it was time to think of technical refinements. Maintaining a log of actual water usage suddenly seemed like a good idea. I could think of several benefits of measuring water usage, including: Learn how much water is optimal for each plant so we can… Continue reading The Impossible Takes a Little Longer
Measuring Flow
Built a fully working prototype of a water flow meter using $25 of parts, including an Arduino microcomputer. It behaves exactly like a meter costing ten times as much. I’ll build a “production” version of this and incorporate it into our indoor irrigation system.
Harvest Time
Basil from our indoor garden, ready to garnish our dinner.
Manifold Destiny
A manifold is a wide and/or bigger pipe, or channel, into which smaller pipes or channels lead. Scott, John S. (1992). Dictionary Of Civil Engineering. Springer. p. 269. Over the past few months I’ve been educating myself about ways to distribute water to indoor house plants by building a series of irrigation systems. A manifold… Continue reading Manifold Destiny
Yet Another Manifold
Built my latest manifold for watering house plants. It’s smaller, with 5 zones controlled by solenoid valves; each zone can have 8 adjustable drippers. We can adjust the duration and frequency of watering for each zone via the Web.
Harvest Time
Our first microgreens harvest, just in time for Thanksgiving dinner.
Arrival of Winter
Winter arrived overnight. It’s a good day to cocoon.