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Added linear translation to the camera!

I ended up adding an Adafruit Motor HAT to the raspberry pi controlling the position of the camera pan and tilt. That way I can use one of the two controls for the NEMA-17 I bought some time ago. I was planning on using this as a proper raspberry pi HAT but this works well enough until I find a better method that uses less resources.  Well this is much simpler than old way I was doing that used too many GPIO pins. The old method of using two L293D used too many GPIO pins. This Motor HAT is i2c so I have a lot of GPIO pins left in this raspberry pi as it is. The spare motor control will be used for controlling the water pump. I still need a way to open/close some valves easily.

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Maple bonsai tree
Cherry bonsai tree

Well all the plants survived including the cherry tree. No blooms this year it seems. Well, I got a visitor and it brought its own lunch!

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Disaster!

Everything got wet! I lost a few sensors and an Ethernet to power adapter. I will keep to a minimum the system for a while. I may have lost one of the cameras too. So, no cameras for a while or control through the web!

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We have moved!

I moved to Michigan about a month ago and just got a chance to bring back this website. I have removed some things for the moment (only one camera). The camera controls are currently disabled.

 

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Added some wheels

Well, camera 1 is now on wheels. Control through the web will be added later, right now is only through the command prompt. The wheels are on a Actobotics frame bought from Servocity. I am also using a stepper motor, that way I can keep count of how many steps I move ‘forward’ or ‘backwards’.  All of this is of course controlled by the Raspberry Pi using Python code and a couple of L293D chips.

Another recent addition is control of two valves for watering bonsai or the other plants like strawberries and beans. I am also using L293D chip to control these valves and the pump (12V). These valves seem to have been taken from coffee machines. Nice and robust but also 12V. I am finally using all those pins on the newer Raspberry Pi 2. There are of course HATs that you can buy that could simplify the setup.