Since moving into the apartment, I knew that I'd want to build some new hydroponic systems as I had really enjoyed growing in the system I had at Stanly st. I really wanted to build new hardware and software, though I realised that was a lofty goal. Back in November 2024 I started testing some peristaltic pump calibration routines with the intention of making a board.
This year I wanted to get a garden up, and it's involved a bunch of steps.
The windows of my workshop looks out onto a tin roof and had an old, collapsing shade structure. I rebuilt the frame and added hangers so I can have two flood and drain trays directly out the windows and the reservoir and doser inside my studio/workshop. This is great from a heat perspective as it keeps my water temps way lower than they would be if the res was on the roof.
Next, I needed a doser for the reservoir. I had the existing hardware that I had developed for Sproutstack. I really didn't want to use it as is, so I wrote new software. The old system was all particle.io based. I wrote some code to make the existing system with my new pump calibration routines into a i2c slave and then developed new dosing software on a esp32.
This was also an opportunity to experiment with Claude Code writing code for embeded c systems. Which has worked out pretty well so far.
Then building out the system, planning the first seedlings, calibrating sensors and getting everything up and running.
It's still pretty minimal but it's enough to grow in for now. I'm running some nutrients that I've had open for several years and strangely, I need to dose my ph up rather than down now. The plants still seem to thrive on it so that can be the judge.
I don't have the system doing the watering yet as I initially set that up with a wifi switch and a home assistant automation long before I got the doser working, while I was just giving seedlings water, and it's been reliable.
The new system is all MQTT based, and I'm at the point of logging the data and graphing in Grafana.
This did kick off a bunch of sub tasks, including networking my studio and home networks to each other, but that's another post.
