Introduction: Smart Green Wall
It is a great way to make your home green and to have fresh plants like: Mint "tea with mint", Spinach, Basil, Parsley, as well as flowers near to you for fragrant smell or to use in organic health food.
A smart wall from old wooden board that is attached to a movable shelf and plenty of old plastic bottles that's attached to each other vertically, and controlled by Lego Ev3 brick and motors & Vernier soil moister sensor used from older projects.
The sensor sense if the soil is dry and if it is the motors will start moving up the shelf so that the water will fall down from the top to the last bottle in the line "column" vertically to water all the plants.
Note: Ev3 can be replaced with Arduino board and regular motors instead of Lego motors.
Note: in Ev3 program you can change the brick lights to show red colour if the water in the top shelf is finished (i.e. the soil is still dry after a while of moving the shelf.
Step 1: Attaching the Bottles
1. With a source of heat make a hole in the bottom of every bottle, the size should be the same as the bottle tip.
2. Cut around 6" to 7" (inches) square in the middle of each bottle (this is to insert the plants in.
3. Make a hole in the middle of every bottle cap, then screw it in after attaching two bottles to keep them firmly attached to each other
4. Keep connecting the bottles until you reach the desired tall.
Step 2: Painting and Prepairing the Board
1. Make the board flat as possible sand it if you can. (mine was too old so it went in many preparation steps)
2. Paint the wooden board in paint that is waterproof
3. Connect the movable shelf, and attach to it elastic wires to hold up the bottles of water on top.
Step 3: Connecting All Together
1. Measure the distance between each line, it really depends on your wooden wall size and your plants.
2. Using drill attach each bottles line in to the wooden wall.
3. Put the soil and the plants inside the bottles from the square holes we make before.
4. Put the Viner humidity sensor inside the soil of the lower rows of bottles.
5. Attach the Ev3 brick and motors to the wooden wall.
Step 4: Fun Programing
since Ev3 programing uses coloured bricks to make the code it is so easy to use and alter, so I will write the main idea:
set the brick light colour to Green
for every 12hours ( get the soil moist degree )
if it is dry move the top shelf by running the motors
get the soil moist degree again
if it is dry then change the brick light colour to Red and make some noisy sound
else do nothing