Installing the SW on the Raspberry Pi

The Hydrosys4 is a SW for the raspberry 3 (and RPi0W) which supports connections of several hardware. For a first evaluation, it is possible to test the system user interface and the available functions just using the raspberry pi hardware and SD card.

For a fast installation download the SD image (for SD cards equal or larger than 4 GB) from this link: Hydrosys4 SD image

restore the SD image on the SD card, insert it on the raspberry and power on.

How to Reach the system interface Now that you have the SD card loaded with the Hydrosys4 SW, it is time to power on the Raspberry Pi . After few seconds the system will be loaded and if everything has gone right you should be able to see a new WiFi network generated by the RPi which act as access point. The web server runs into the raspberry no external servers are used to run the system.

Below the default name and password of wifi network

  • Name of the network: hydrosys4
  • password: hydrosystem

NOTE: Sometimes the first connection is not successful and the WiFi shows invalid password. If this happen, just wait for 30 seconds and try to connect again. This behavior happen only during the first connection, next connections will just work fine.

Once the network is connected, open any web browser and type the URL as follow: 192.168.1.172:5172.

Great, now the hydrosys4 web interface should be up on your smartphone or PC. (it is suggested to save this URL in the favorite for future reference)

Now enter the default username and password:

  • username: admin
  • password: default

It is recommended to change the login password.

If you want to know more about the interface and functions, you can visit the following link:

Hydrosys4 project


Main interface page:

watering plan interface:

Data interface:

Hardware description

  • The Hydrosystem hardware is based on the raspberry pi3 and raspberry zero W.
  • The user interface is based on web server hosted on the raspberry itself. Wifi is mandatory for the system to work.
  • Hardware can be equipped to have an hardware Clock, Temperature, humidity sensors etc. These sensors are not mandatory but it is recommended to include at least the DHT22 for humidity and temperature measurement. (other sensors include BH1750, BMP180, MCP3008)
  • Electrical Relay are required to manage the actuators. In my implementation I used only 12V actuators as valves, pumps etc. (Which happen to be cheaper than the 24V commonly used for irrigation)
  • The project is designed to be cheap, save money as much as possible and still reach the target.
  • The SW is open source hopefully everybody can contribute to it.
  • For the remote access, there is no external server, connection is made directly to the raspberry server.

Minimal hardware Setting

To test the hydrosys4 system you only require the raspberry pi3 (or the raspberry pi zero W)

With the minimal hardware configuration you can have a look at the interface and evaluate the Software.

If you have a Usb webcam, then try to connect to the USB of RPI.

Full hardware Setting

The full hardware and schematics supported by the system are described in the following link:

Hydrosys4 Hardware

Example of DHT22 connection:

Example of relay connection:

Example of working project: