I have been thinking about this problem and its solution for a couple months. In that time several basil (and other) plants have died because of drought. Which is unnecesay because they where right next to the faucet.

So finally I ordered a peristaltic pump from ebay and a soil moisture sensor from aliexpress. When I finally received the parts I tested them briefly. Everything seems to work so it is time to design an enclosure.

The enclosure will be put on the kitchen counter. So it should be possible to easily move it, also when cleaning the kitchen there is a lot of water involved. Also I want to try lasercutting so I designed a 3mm plywood box.

During the design I also needed to find a suitable water container. It must not be too large, because if there is a problem with the electronics I do not want to have clean up my entire kitchen. Also the container must be dark to prevent algae, if there are algae in the container it should be easy to replace. After a quick scan in the kitchen I found a suitable container: a red wine bottle of 0.75 litre.

Next was the user interface. A couple of leds, potentiometer to set the point at which the system should start to water and a button to manually start the pump (For initial startup/new plant). The laser cut design has mounting for all these parts and the pump. The arduino mini pro has no mounting and will be put in a heat shrink.

The laser cut design is send to snijlab.nl for cutting so in about 2 weeks it will arrive.