Highly configurable software that helps you to control and monitor the environment of your plants. It is focused on indoor use, but can also be used outdoors or in mixed scenarios.
- Measurement of environmental data through sensors
- Structured storage of measurements in local databases
- Easy integration with monitoring and visualization tools, e.g. Grafana
- Control of various actuators via GPIOs
- Highly configurable for different use cases
- Easy installation and maintenance with the help of Nix
Typically this project runs on a device that is close your plants, for example a Raspberry Pi or similar. Everything is tested and known to work on a Raspberry Pi 4 Model B, but you could also run it on other devices. The only requirements are access to the Linux I2C Device interface if you want to use sensors and a GPIO character device if you want to control GPIOs.
This project mainly consists of two components:
-
Agent: The heart of this project. It measures the sensors, controls the GPIOs and stores measurements in databases. The configuration gives you fine grained control over everything, you can set different parameters and disable parts that don't fit your use case.
-
Server: Provides a simple HTTP API to get measurements. Offers basic filtering and provides the data in a format that can be consumed by Grafana dashboards.
The NixOS modules provide a very convenient way to install and configure everything together with a pre-provisioned Grafana instance. If you don't have Nix installed already, check out the Determinate Nix Installer, it boils down to one command. Check out the Nix Raspberry Pi SD image example to build a ready-to-run image for a Raspberry Pi 4 that you can flash on an SD card and plug into your Pi, no further configuration is needed.
Let's assume we have BME680 gas/air sensors and BH1750FVI light sensors connected to a Raspberry Pi 4 via I2C. Additionally, the Raspberry controls a light through GPIO 24, which is represented by an LED. In a real world setup the GPIO would probably trigger a relais with a plant lamp.
The agent configuration only needs to mention the available items, things not listed in the config
are disabled by default. Assuming that the air sensors have the addresses 0x76 and 0x77 while
the light sensor addresses are 0x23 and 0x5C, the minimal agent Nix configuration would look as
follows.
{
grow.agent.config = {
air.sample = {
sample_rate_secs = 600;
sensors = {
left = {
model = "Bme680";
address = "0x77";
};
right = {
model = "Bme680";
address = "0x76";
};
};
};
light = {
control = {
mode = "TimeBased";
pin = 24;
activate_time = "10:00:00";
deactivate_time = "22:00:00";
};
sample = {
sample_rate_secs = 1200;
sensors = {
left = {
model = "Bh1750Fvi";
address = "0x23";
};
right = {
model = "Bh1750Fvi";
address = "0x5C";
};
};
};
};
};
}This will
- Measure with both air sensors every 10 minutes
- Measure with both light sensors every 20 minutes
- Activate GPIO 24 at 10:00:00 UTC and deactivate it at 22:00:00 UTC
See the agent crate for more information.
Additionally, the server crate provides a HTTP API for the measurements which the Grafana Dashboard uses to display time series of the measurements.
