If you have any plants at home, you know you must also have someone to take care of them while you're away. The only plants I keep at home are some herbs, mint and lemon balm for cold drinks, basil for cooking. This summer was really hard on my plants, I had to buy new ones a few times already, so I decided to throw some electronics at the problem.

The idea

This is what I drew 3 weeks ago:

Originally I wanted to use a big 3d printed pump. I checked every pump on thingiverse, but I didn't find anything that would work for me. I even printed this huge pump http://www.thingiverse.com/thing:412150, but it is way too big. The valves turned out to be problematic too. 3d printed valves with RC servos don't look too reliable and solenoid values are quite expensive.

Finally I found small cheap peristaltic pumps on banggood.com, with one specific model available in EU warehouse, so there were chances I'll get them before the end of the Hackaday Prize! I purchased 3 of them and yesterday they finally arrived, only 9 days after I purchased them:

What's next?

Pumps

According to the specs, the pumps I got have the hose with 2.5mm internal and 4.7mm external diameter - kind of odd for me (it probably makes more sense in imperial units). I purchased 2/4mm and 3/5mm silicon hoses, I hope one of them will fit. I'm expecting them by the end of this week. Until then I won't test the pumps, the hoses are way too short.

Sensors

I have only one humidity sensor for now (I probably won't get more in time), I will try to test humidity levels with it and see what useful values will it return. I also have a bunch of different temperature and air humidity sensors, I'll play with them and see that will I be able to use.

Other

I need to migrate to a bigger protoboard, I have no room left for RTC, WiFi and the buttons. Maybe I'll be able to hook those up before the weekend.