r/arduino • u/Dangerous_Evening6 • 6d ago

Automatic garden watering

So my family and I are going away for the summer and won't be able to take care of our plants for about 2 months. I've been wanting to learn these stuff so I wanna build a system that, on a schedule, waters the garden bed in my backyard. I have both a tap and powesocket outside. I was thinking of using a soaker hose, and a solenoid valve attached to my tap. Is this a good way to do that or are there other ways to get water from my tap to the garden?

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u/tlbs101 6d ago

You definitely need some kind of electric valve. No matter whether it is a commercial irrigation valve (this or similar) or something more basic (this), you will need to construct a circuit to operate the valve solenoids from the Arduino port pins. You will need a power supply that supplies the solenoid voltage (example: 24 VAC, 12 VDC, etc) as well as the necessary voltage for the Arduino board (6 VDC nominally). There are many many circuits available (along with the code) because this has been done over and over. it’s actually a good starter project. Start by Googling Arduino automatic watering and watch a few videos.

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u/jbarchuk 6d ago

I've been wanting to learn...

Please don't let this be your first try. It's fairly involved, and not a quick project. If you mess up, there'll be dead plants either fried or flooded. For this task get a plain lawn irrigation timer and valve(s). It'll work perfectly in 30 minutes, and you'll never have to think about it again.