Arduino Life 1: Greenhouse Temperature, Humidity and Light Level Arduino Project

I have been meaning to learn more about Arduino and other micro controllers, but my involvement in Hackerspace LA finally fired me up to do some more technology projects.

A few weeks ago I picked up an Arduino Yun, a pack of 37 sensors and started learning and playing.

Greenhouse monitor

Arduino Yun with temperature, humidity and light sensor in the greenhouse

I picked the Arduino Yun because I knew I was going to want to easily connect my projects to the Internet for data reporting. This board has both a Linux computer and an Arduino in one package — as well as built-in WiFi. These two systems can “bridge” together and share data in both directions and the WiFi can connect to a local network in order to reach services like IFTTT and others.

While I’ll go more in-depth on this project in future posts, here are the basics of what this system is doing right now.

Greenhouse Temperature, Humidity and Light Level Arduino Project

Powered by USB power bank
Arduino Yun connected to breadboard for power and sensor data
Local WiFi connection via Arduino Yun for data reporting
Read Temperature and Humidity using blue sensor at top
Read current light level using photo-resistor and converting to 100 point scale (0-100, with 0 being total darkness)
Date and Time pulled from Linux side of Arduino Yun
Data logged to file on internal SD Card on Arduino (can be accessed remotely via SSH)
Data logged remotely to Google Spreadsheet via IFTTT
Data tweeted out to @douglaswelch via IFTTT
Data notified on iPhone via IFTTT
Currently polling and reporting every 5 minutes

More information and projects to come!

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