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A Quiet Summer

A project log for ESP32 Greenhouse Monitor

Collect temp/humidity, soil moisture, sunlight data to be stored on local web server

jeff-taylorJeff Taylor 08/10/2018 at 18:200 Comments

Haven't worked much on this project over the Summer, however I have been ordering parts to transfer the circuit onto a soldered breadboard and mount it in a case.  I picked up a 10m 3.5mm stereo extension cord and cut that in half to solder to the soil moisture probes.  The idea was to have them plug into standard sockets mounted in the case.  Unfortunately it appears that the Chinese sellers on ebay of what a "female stereo jack" actually means... the last two orders I received only have pins for MONO plugs!?!  Silly me for thinking that ebay sellers have any concept of the standard industry terminology.

Beyond that, I have a waterproof case with a clear lid... and a nice casting cutoff point right in the middle of the clear lid.  Again, are any of these people paying attention?  Of course the sales pictures show a perfectly clear lid with no blemishes.  I think if I'm careful I can clean up the spot and use the dremel to polish the plastic out again.

I have some circuit boards, various switches, a bunch of different 2.54mm headers and plugs, and headers to plug in the ESP32 module and allow it to still be replaceable.  I also got a power supply with a larger current output, hoping that will fix the problem with the relays not reliably switching.  Before I get everything put together I still need to update my code to allow OTA programming.

In September I'll be re-covering my roof panels.  The way I wrapped the plastic around last time turned out to work very poorly and the Spring winds tore the plastic from several panels.  This time I'll cut the plastic much larger to allow for a lot more wrapping around the sides.  I also figured out that if I leave an extra 6 inches hanging from the bottom edges, I can use that to tuck inside the greenhouse framework and completely seal off the large gap I've always had between the roof and wall panels, eliminating a huge source of heat loss.  Maybe this year I'll be able to keep things going beyond December!  Thanks to other changes, the tomatoes and cucumbers are growing like mad this year so it would be great if they continue to produce for awhile.

The greenhouse walls will go back up around the beginning of October, and with that I will be setting up my ESP monitor again (hopefully with all the new hardware and sealed in a case).

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