Vertical Garden

Aim

To build a solar powered aeroponics vertical tower to grow vegetables, using 3D printed parts and off the shelf or reused components.

Theory

• The vertical tower has a resevoir as a base, a small pump is used to pump water (+nutritents) up the central column and then the water cascades down inside coating the netcups and roots of the growing plants.
• The control and power come from a outdoor solar power bank that sits next to the tower, it relays data to the home network.

Outdoor Solar Power Bank

Components

• 12v 50W Solar Panel
• 'Stanley' Tool Box
• LiFePO4 12v 20Ah Battery (Leoch LFP1220 - we have a local battery shop so I went there rather than order a cheaper battery online)
• Victron SmartSolar MPPT 75|10 Charger
• DFRobot Beetle ESP32 C6
• MOSFET
• Kickback Diode
• 12v to 5v stepdown converter
• Some connectors

Software

• The ESP32 acts as the main controller, it is powered via stepdown converter from the main 12v output from the SmartSolar charger and controls a mosfet which can turn the water pump on and off.
• It also uses bluetooth receiver to intercept the BLE packets broadcast from the SmartSolar charger, decodes them and then forwards them via WiFi to my home network to be displayed on my grafana dashboard.