Aeroponics system live

Aeroponics system live

Today the rucola growing machine went operational. How came this project to be?

I’ve always been interested in plants and electronics and recent developments gave me the opportunity to finally explorer the two. A blog post by an Ultrasonic Aeroponics system gave me all the pointers I needed. Almost all aspects of the project are better described there so I suggest you read that post first. Excellent reading!

Differences

Time

It took me a bit longer to build the project this being my first of this kind. I spent a couple of days on it. Mostly on the Arduino.

Setup

One major difference that I use an Arduino clone (a Jeenode) to turn the mister on and off. InventGeek didn’t include that in their design but it seems pretty common to do so. This lets the root aerate. Currently I run the fogger for 5 minutes every half an hour.

Costs

I had to buy everything from scratch and I was unable to find a mister and a power supply for \$6. I spend nearly \$20 dollars on that alone. Here’s a complete breakdown.

Future

Now I have only optimized one part of the growth process namely nutrient uptake. Evidently ambient temperature and light are just as important. I wish I had a server running at home. That waste heat would have been excellent. For lighting I’ll research these LED grow lights on eBay.

Using an Arduino for just a timer is silly. I plan to measure ambient temperature, lighting conditions and acidity of the water in the near future and push those measurements in a small database and make some pretty graphs.