Talking Thirsty Plant

Do you or someone you know always water the plant after it starts to look very sad? Well this next project I am working on will give the plants an opportunity to speak up before it happens.

Thinking through the idea I want the plant to be able to say something to potential residents to know the moisture level is getting low. The plant could say things like “Hello, Yo, I need water, or Ahem”

Well this sounds annoying you say? well how about adding a feature to only go off during certain times of the day? Better yet lets add facial recognition to only bug the person responsible for watering the plant.

This idea is a great spring time activity to get your futuristic talking garden you always wanted.

I have uploaded the video to my youtube page.

For this project you will need the following.

  • Speaker

Optionally for facial recognition you will need the following

  • Jetson Nano

STEP 1 Wiring Pi

Solder the pins to the ADS1115 board and connect to raspberry pi board on the following pins.

VDD – (Rpi 3.3v)

GND – (Rpi Ground)

SCL – (Rpi pin 3)

SDA – (Rpi pin 2)

Next wire the moisture sensor

VCC – (Rpi 3.3v)

GND – (Rpi Ground)

Aout – (ADS115 A0)

Once the wiring is complete go ahead and hook up the usb audio adapter and speaker.

STEP 2 Run the code

Power up the raspberry pi.

Go to my github page and get the latest files for this project. Download the Plant.py file for the raspberry pi.

https://github.com/Botmation

You should now see current reading from the sensor. In the air you may see values above 1200. If you dip the sensor into water you will see values below 600.

The code also includes mqtt function which listens for alerts from the nano. This is optional and won’t interfere if you do not have the nano.

Facial Recognition with Nano

If you like to use the facial recognition feature download the nano.py from github site.

For initial setup of the Nano please watch my video which walks you through the setup and training the program to recognize your face.

Once you train the program you can then run the Nano.py using the trained file as reference.

You will need to edit the code and update the network IP address to point to your raspberry pi.