Garduino Upgrade, Now with more Twitter!

Step 3 Upgrade #1: Remote Sensors

One of my early upgrades to this project was to take the sensors off the arduino and put them closer to the plants.  I wanted to do this primarily to keep the arduino as far away from the water and water pump as possible.  The nice thing about this is that you can put your arduino somewhere accessible and safe and keep the sensors you want closer to the plants, where they are needed.  Is this a good idea?  Maybe, but I was happy to do it.

My sensor was designed to have the temperature, light and moisture sensors onboard.  Also, I included 2 red LEDs so that I could indicate if the plants were being watered or if the temperature went out of an acceptable range.  Of course this was before I had decided to keep the plants indoors, so in retrospect I'd probably ditch the temp and light sensor and leave the LED on the arduino.  Better yet I could have just used the onboard LED connected to pin 13 on the arduino.  Then all I'd have is two wires leaving the arduino to act as the moisture sensor for the plant.  Regardless, this was a fun part of the project and I learned a lot.

You can download the schematic and board layout files I created.  I decided to build the board by hand instead of having it manufactured for me primarily due to cost.