Howdy folks,

After a bit of thought it seems that it will take more than just a wirelessly accessible set of sensors to grow plants on window sills in the arctic.

Basically, the issue as it exists now is the plants I am growing need to be cooled and temperature controlled. The opposite principle applies for a setup in the north. The setup will need a way of heating the plant environment to stay within an acceptable range for promoting plant growth whilst inhibiting fungal and bacterial growth.

After a bit of thinking last night, a solution involving the use of water for it's excellent thermal transfer properties was obvious. After a quick bit of research, it is the roots of plants that need to be kept warm or cool which makes the task a bit easier.

First, let's operate on the assumption that most homes in the Canadian North use one of two technologies for heating, forced air heating or thermal fluid heating systems. If a small water reservoir was added near an air duct or heat vent it would serve the purpose nicely.

Passively heating water to room temperature then pumping it through tubing placed under the planters seems like an ideal solution. The opposite principle would apply anywhere warm, circulating comparatively cool water at room temperature to plants on a hot window sill would prevent plants from bolting too soon and/or dying due to fungal soil growth caused by higher temperatures.

Since we are already going to the trouble of adding a heat exchanger, we may as well also add a system to automatically water the plants too. Plants also tend to have a wide variety of optimal growth conditions, and incorporating those as presets into the final microcontroller system would be an obvious benefit.

All of this means the scope of the final system configuration changes a bit, from a simple planter and sensor setup into a slightly larger setup involving tubes, pumps and self-watering system.