Domoticz

Probably less fancy than most other projects, but it's been useful for me.

I'm using Domoticz as controller for the system that waters my plants indoors. I'm currently growing Chili, Physalis, Aubergine and Thyme in pots in the windowsills. All pots have 3 plants, so it needs to be watered somewhat frequent.
My waterpump and distribution (irrigation?) is a Gardena Holiday Watering Set, connected through a Fibaro Wall Plug.

The pots are small terracotta pots, watered from the tray. Watering from the tray helps a little preventing Fungus Gnats, and makes the roots grow downwards instead of just spreading out on the top. All good, exept a tiny issue: The pot's trays don't hold the amount of water the Gardena kit supplies, wich led to water everywhere.
The Gardena kit gives water for 1 minute per day, and the shortest timer for the wallplug is also 1 minute. The trays overfill in less than this.
My solution was to use a virtual switch with timer, and a Blockly event. The event triggers on the virtual switch turning on, runs the waterpump (via wall plug) for 0.6 minutes, and then turns the virtual switch off. Currently the vitual switch is timed to trigger at sunrise, sunrise+6,+12, and +18 hours. Cutting the power to the waterpump overrides the 24h timer in it, making it restart it's cycle every time.
Currently this gives my tiny pots just enough water to not overfill, and not drying out/drowning my plants.

So far I've been running this for a month, with minimal changes and maintenance:

• I changed from waterbucket to a large vase as watertank, that improved the overall look of it a lot. I clean and refill this weekly, to prevent bacteria and algae buildup.
• I added a sensor to detect water leaks next to the pot with the smallest tray, one is a tiny bit smaller than the rest (or has a larger pot, I dunno). I also added a And function to the blockly event, that stops it from starting if the watersensor has gone off.
• Im currently at 10 pots watered by this, it probably will expand to 15-20.

Stuff I've yet to do on this project:

• Add soil moisture meters. While it's currently balanced in terms of amount watered vs what the plants needs, it will require adjusting timer - this could be automatically adjusted if I knew soil moisture. I'm trying to use Z-wave/Wifi, wich limits the options a lot.
• Include artificial plant lights. It's currently running from sunrise to 8 hours before sunrise, If I change from time to soil moisture as trigger for watering, it should also match lights cycle somewhat?
• Add a sensor for water presence in watertank, with notification if it runs empty. It's currently not needed - the plant's don't (yet) use a lot of water, and I refill when cleaning tank weekly anyway.

As for why I did all this, instead of just watering my plants like everyone else? Mostly just for fun, and for seeing that I can do this, despite having next to zero programming skills. - Hence the Blockly.. It also enables me to go away for days, without killing off all my plants.

Hello
By looking at your Gardena link, I realise I just yesterday bought a Aldi version of the same set !
https://www.aldi.nl/aanbiedingen/vanaf- ... ticle.html
Have you made progress, could share some screen shots (blockly), scripts ?

I have a small green house on a balcony, with a >100liter container (rain water) and a bunch of plants (strawberries, tomatoes)
I plan to dump the pump in the container, and as its power supply behaves like yours (runs waterpump for 1mn when first plugged in then waits 24 hours to run waterpump again), and as I think I might need more watering: I will connect it to a smart plug (LSC on which I had put Tasmota) that will take care of turning it on and off and on again etc.

For a bit of cleverness, will add a temperature sensor in there but want to keep it as simple as possible -

I ended up dumping this project, due to moving. ..at least for now, I'll probably pick it up agean come spring..

Most of the problems I had with this setup, was due to too small trays/saucers, wrong kind of plants for terracotta, and lack of sensors.
Your realy need a proper way to detect overflow. I used a Sensio water sensor, but those takes ages to go from "wet" status to "dry". Proper submersible detector (like Aeotec's) would been smart, both to detect overflow, and when trays are full/empty.

Terracotta pots is really smart for plants that like dry soil. For my small pots with vegetables - not so much. It ended up being humidifier for air, rather than soil. They did get that rustic well-used-look real fast, it's almost a pity I'm not all that into the fashion part of gardening.
For my bigger pots (31cm) it really worked well, It was enough mass to keep water, and slow the drying of the soil.

For scripts, I used vitual switches on timer, that triggered Blockly script.
I used "and" functions to check both for overflow, and if virtual switch indicated it to run. Due to very small trays, I used 0.4minute runtime, that worked somewhat well. For pots with need of more water, I just ran more tubes feeding it.
Watering a little every day turned out to not be a great idea. Most my plants grew better when they were fed water every third day.

Next time I will try placing watertank in area with no light, and usea small waterpump to keep it moving. Scrubbing off algae every week got dull quickly.

Running timers for watering based on light shedules did not make much sence in the end. I tried running timer for artificial lights based on sunrise, but that would just keep light on all nights in the winter. Instead I based on/off from Sun at South, and based watering shedule on the same principle.
In order not to fry the plants, I used a lux sensor to trigger turning off artificial lights when the sun was strong.