Irrigation Unit

A self-contained irrigation unit that waters from live soil readings instead of a timer.

2024Firmware, enclosure and dataReport (opens in a new tab)

Annotated SolidWorks render of the irrigation enclosure, with notes on the motor driver seat, motor fit, ESP32 and breadboard pockets, and the photocell opening.

An ESP32 reads soil moisture, temperature and humidity from a DHT22 and light from a photocell, doses 20 mL whenever moisture falls to 40%, and publishes every reading over MQTT at three-second intervals.

I modeled the enclosure in SolidWorks so each board seats in its own pocket, with the photocell exposed through the open top.

Across four environments over five days it logged more than 33,000 readings with 97.4% uptime, and the exported time series went straight back into tuning the threshold.