Aqua Thingy Part 1
During a heatwave in early July, I decided that I should get a pool. So off I went on an adventure to find a small pool that would suit my needs. On the drive home from purchasing my new pool, I decided that pools are far more fun if they are utilized for food production and growing aquatic plants. The term for this is aquaculture and that is exactly what I ended up doing.
After the pool was setup, I got to work building a solar powered computer to control a water pump and a few valves so that I could remotely control circulating the water and irrigating my veggie garden.
Some Materials:
- a Linkit Smart 7688 running OpenWRT Linux
- 3 12 volt water valves to control water flow
- a 12 volt battery to store the juice
- a 100 watt 12 volt solar panel with charge controller to make some juice
- a sweet fake rock to hide some stuff
- a 12 volt water pump to move some water
- a 4 channel relay to control the water pump and valves from the computer's GPIO
- an omni-directional antenna to add extra distance to the Linkit's built-in WIFI
Driveways are over-rated
The pool instructions vehemently state that the pool must be installed on level ground. There is only one location at my home
that is even close to being level: the middle of the driveway.
Keeping it full
An old broken trash can, and a float from a discarded livestock waterer soon became a float valve for the aqua-thingy.
Network connected control
The computer, relay, valves, and charge controller were all mounted to a hella finely crafted
bit of wood. OK, I might have just screwed together some scrap wood to make a frame to hold things... but it works!
The water hoses are all ½ inch.
Set up and mostly running
- Relay 1 controls the pump
- Relay 2 opens the valve for recirculation
- Relay 3 opens the valve for irrigating the veggies
- Relay 4 isn't being used yet
The antenna has been attached to the Linkit, but has yet to be mounted properly
Not quite working
Something was a bit amiss with the setup, and it was necessary to ssh into the aqua-thingy computer and
edit a few files. Fortunately, I could do the necessary fixes from my phone
Simple UI
It isn't much to look at, but I can control all of the relays with the press of a button :)
The aqua-thingy is ever evolving, and I am testing new pumps and controller code, and there are a few lotus plants starting to grow in the pool.
Cheers!
jezra