irrigation_bone – irrigate exactly the amount of water needed

[niv]

Here is my initial publish of this code, I still need to make it user freindly, but figured, some members may find this usefull.
https://github.com/nivw/irrigation_bone

This code uses the open sprinkler for beaglebone black First version has these features:
1. A single electric faucet is controled using the open sprinkler web interface.
2. Single plant type in the garden.
3. Values of plant type and garden size are hard coded.
4. Garden is watered every two days.
5. Garden is in Israel in the Sharon area. So the Tel mond meteorologic station is used.
6. I use the fs300a water flow sensor , to messure the amount of water used.

If anyone want me to port this to their contry , please ask you agriculture office to tell you where to get the Penman–Monteith coeeficiant near you, it worked for me.
Any comments are welcome,
Niv

[Ray]

Thanks for sharing. The flow sensor part is particularly interesting. Will be taking a look at your code shortly. Thanks.

[niv]

This program proved to work fine for two weeks while I was on vacation. I left the water sensor a bigger garden to prove it works, I see a lot of reading even whn the electric faucet is turned off.

[niv]

Some explanation to what I did:

I wanted a program to run unattended on the device, that will increase irrigation on hot days. I found the Penman-Monteith coefficient. It a number that is calculated by the amount of solar radiation, wind, temperature. you can get his number from a close by meteorological station.

For example here are such a website in Carolina: http://www.nc-climate.ncsu.edu/openwaterevap

Then you just need to make this simple calculation: Plant coefficient X area X PM coefficient = amount of litres to irrigate

Plant coefficient: 0.5 for grass and 0.7 for roses, what do you grow?

Area in square meters

Assume its a hot day here the PM may reach 6. Assume My plants coefficient is 0.6, and i have 10 square meters, I will water the garden with 6X0.6X10 = 36 litters that day.

I usually irrigate an hour after the sunset because then the air humanity rises, so water loss is minimal.Also the plant outer “skin” opens up to accept water.

Now if you water too much, you also end up hurting plants. So I started to seek a way to measure the exact amount of water I irrigate.

[niv]

Today something interesting happened Here, we had high winds from the Egypt, which carried a lot of dust.

The result was a sharp change in the PM:

Feb 8 – PM was 2

Feb 9 – was 0.3

Feb 10 – was 3.7

I am validating the PM I query, so I won’t run the irrigation for ever in the case a bird builds a nest over the meteorological sensor.

So it emailed me today to tell me a sharp factor was found between the last day and today.

I adjusted the thresholds , and the system recovered.

[Author]

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