New Wireling Plant Monitor Kit
The Plant Monitor Kit recently featured on Nuts + Volts by John Gavlik takes a lot of the guesswork out of growing and maintaining an indoor plant. Two important elements for good growth are moisture and light. This Kit monitors both and alerts you to when one, or the other, is less than optimal. In the end, we can’t guarantee a thriving plant with this Kit but, at least, you’ll have a better fighting chance for growing it successfully, plus no soldering required!
This kit includes the following items:
- 1- TinyScreen+ Processor This is an ARM processor/OLED combination that runs at 48 MHz and includes 256K of Flash and 32K of RAM. The 16-color OLED (96h x 64v pixel) is less than a one-inch square and acts as the primary display for all the collected data. It also has a Micro USB port for battery charging, data input and output, and reprogramming.
- 1-Wireling Adapter TinyShield The 20x20 mm Wireling Adapter includes four 5-pin connectors that connect the soil moisture sensors, light sensor, and buzzer to the main processor via I2C signaling protocol. Physically, the Wirelings are connected to the Wireling Adapter using pre-wired connector cables, so no soldering is required.
- 2-Soil Moisture Sensor Wirelings These Wireling sensors feature the ATtiny25, a high performance, low-power AVR 8-bit controller. Soil moisture is detected using capacitance to measure dielectric permittivity of the surrounding medium (dirt or potting soil).
- 1- Buzzer Wireling This Wireling uses the AST7525MATRQ buzzer to give you the ability to “hear” when things are not right with your plant’s soil moisture or light levels.
- 1- Ambient Light Sensor This Wireling lets you measure ambient light levels via the TSL2572 chip that mimics the human eye.
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1- 290 mAh Rechargeable Lithium Polymer Battery -
This is a rechargeable Lithium-ion polymer battery that can power the entire unit. The battery includes protection circuitry to protect the battery from overcharging or completely discharging.
- 4- Wireling Cables + 1 3ft. Micro USB cable With the kit you’ll get all the cables you’ll need for it to work. This includes the Wireling cables that attach the Wireling sensors to the Wireling Adapter Board as well as the Micro USB cable that attaches to your computer.
The Plant Monitor Kit is available from the shop for $74.95. You can also check out these resources to get started with this kit!