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Vinduino, a water saving project

By on February 8, 2017
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The Vinduino project (Vineyard + Arduino) started out of necessity to better manage irrigation in Southern California vineyard and reduce agricultural water consumption by 25% (25% of 42 million acre feet/year is more than the annual urban water use).
In order to be of the greatest possible use to the public, the Vinduino project is open source, affordable, and easy to build.

Using a single soil moisture sensor, you can determine when to start irrigation, but overwatering is hard to avoid. By using multiple sensors, located at different depths, you can actually control irrigation to not exceed the active root zone, and thus save water:

Because the sensors are connected together through a soil resistance path, multi-sensor measurements can only be done when sensors are disconnected when not in use. Vinduino uses regular 2N7000 FETs for this. The handheld reader can measure only one sensor at a time, and therefore can use a simpler interface circuit without FET switches.

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Before to start your project, be sure to have:

1 × 8 characters x 2 lines LCD displayAMC0802BR-B-G6WFDW
1 × Arduino Pro Mini
2 × resistor 4k7, 1%reference resistors used in sensor measurement bridge
1 × resistor 470 OhmLCD backlight current limit
1 × 10 k potentiometerLCD display contrast setting
2 × 1N4148 diodeused in sensor measurement bridge
2 × crocodile connector cable
1 × Polycase VM-24 enclosure + VM24-bootenclosure + protective silicone rubber boot
1 × 9 V block battery
1 × Vinduino-H printed circuit board
1 × Power switchon when pushed in, off when default

 

Now check out the original project and start doing it yourself!

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About Luca Ruggeri

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