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Comment by ewuhic | Hacker News Reader

Almost same question, but quite tangential: I'd like to have a plant watering system with least complexity involved. I would assume a fish tank pump plugged into any PC. The plugging part however is not quite-well thought out, neither the output to multiple pots. Could you suggest some ideas? Arduinos, valves, etc? The watering is not automatic and should happen with a push of a PC keyboard key.

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The easiest solution would be to buy a smartplug and integrate it into one of the smarthome ecosystems like Google Home, Amazon Alexa, Apple HomeKit.

For a more DIY solution you can install Node-RED onto a Raspberry Pi for a GUI flow editor: https://hackaday.com/2020/01/15/automate-your-life-with-node...

Alternatively, if you'd like to do everything on the Raspberry Pi, use its GPIOs to control a relay module with optocoupler isolation (~$4) which can turn the pump on or off: https://www.aliexpress.com/item/2251832713449142.html

If you're more hardcore, you could flash a smartplug like Sonoff S31 with Tasmota and add rules that trigger based on various events (eg: timer). https://tasmota.github.io/docs/Rules/#rule-variables https://tinkerman.cat/post/sonoff-s31-now-serious

I’ve recently contemplated a submersible pump in a bucket (to limit the water in the event of a leak), and just using one of those $10 cloud-enabled switchable plug outlets, with fan-out drip tubing and a suitably-sized flow regulators going to each plant.

Eventually perhaps building in some moisture sensors and some pi/arduino logic to then control the pump.

I recommend you look into Blumats [1] - no electronics required watering system.

[1] https://blumat.com/

You can get watering timers in home depot, you could try hacking one of those? The hard piece to get is probably the electronic valve.

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