Show HN: Xenolab – Rasp Pi monitor for my pet carnivourus plants

https://github.com/blackrabbit17/xenolab

by malux85 • 1 year ago

132 55 1 year ago

github.com

giuliomagnifico• 1 year ago

Impressive work for monitoring some plants! I hope they don’t bite you :)

omneity2• 1 year ago

The “torque” of these plants is very low usually. You barely feel the pressure.

Source: My finger, unscathed after an encounter with a Dionaea.

cactusplant7374• 1 year ago

That’s really cool. Thanks for sharing.

floam• 1 year ago

I bought a Venus fly trap about 10 years ago, and recall wanting to stick some RGB LEDs on an “Arduino or something” to get them to turn on and off in sync with the sun. I was hung up on the idea that this is in my windowsill, so the data on sunrise and sunset I could get from a photoresistor. It would also monitor moisture.

This is so cool!

chneu2• 1 year ago

This setup would take like 10 minutes in Home Assistant.

bigiain2• 1 year ago

OP proceeds to spend 6 months worth of evenings and weekends learning basic electronics, Arduino, and Home Assistant installation and admin - to get to the stage where they can do this in 10 minutes.

anfractuosity• 1 year ago

You might also be interested in this - https://docs.backyardbrains.com/retired/experiments/Plants_V... where they monitor the electrical spikes of the traps.

You can also apparently electrically trigger the closing of fly trap - https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.4161/psb.2.3.4217

teruakohatu• 1 year ago

I need this! I am struggling to grow carnivorous plants in New Zealand. I think I am giving them what they supposedly need but I just can’t win.

malux858• 1 year ago

I think it's something in our water, I have to give them purified water which I buy.

nwellinghoff• 1 year ago

Its the water. I have a ro/DI system and use that water. All of the cool low nutrients species have been living for years no problem.

barbazoo• 1 year ago

If it’s the water, could it help to let it stand for a while? I do that to get rid of the chlorine.

lagniappe• 1 year ago

Many American cities use chloramine, which requires something like Sodium thiosulfate, but then you're left with Ammonia, which may or may not be desired.

darreninthenet• 1 year ago

Just to reiterate what's already been said - don't use tap water. We have a carnivorous plant expert/dealer local to us and he just collects and uses rainwater, as he says tap water will kill them.

Simple waterbutt attached to the drain pipe off the guttering and you get infinite free water for them

teaearlgraycold• 1 year ago

Depends on your tap water. Hetch Hetchy water has worked perfectly for me for years.

dfc• 1 year ago

Water butt (noun) - British: a large container for collecting or storing a liquid (such as rainwater)

This is so much better than "rain barrel".

alecst2• 1 year ago

Was told the same thing, but my tap water works fine. If it’s true that it’s harmful I’d like to see some science (even citizen science.) Pretty sure it’s a myth.

PradeetPatel• 1 year ago

Where abouts in NZ are you? I'm currently based in Wellington and my Venus fly traps, sundew, and pitcher plants seem to be doing quite well on the windowsill.

aucisson_masque• 1 year ago

I can appreciate the engineering but damn this look extreme.

My carnivorous plants are by the window and I water them once in a while, never had issue.

I thought about automating water supply but even me, a geek, realized it would be a waste of time.

bigiain2• 1 year ago

I mean, it was pretty obvious from Xenolab Safety Directive 12.4B that this was not a purely pragmatic and generalised to fit everyone kind of project.

malux858• 1 year ago

My cup runneth over

asmodeuslucifer• 1 year ago

I have some venus fly traps, they are suspended from the side a of a fish tank with the bottom of their container in the (presumably nutritious for them) fish water. Unrelated to blackrabbit17s setup, home assistant controls the lights and pumps.

omneity2• 1 year ago

Great work! It would be interesting to have a side by side comparison with a plant grown without monitoring.

atum472• 1 year ago

I had two carnivorous plants so far, but they all died after 3 months or so. I need to learn how to better care for them, cause I think they are so cool.

diggan3• 1 year ago

As others mentioned, try distilled/purified water. Also killed a bunch myself before switching to it.

lovehashbrowns• 1 year ago

Some of them also hibernate so I do wonder how many people have thought their plant died when it was just hibernating. Lots of the sundews don’t require a hibernation period so if you want to start with easy plants that are carnivorous and also extremely beautiful go with Sundews!

atum472• 1 year ago

the water from my house come's from a well, I thought that was the most "natural" water could get

dugite-code• 1 year ago

That's cool, but I'm curious how you determine that the LED's output the right wavelengths for plant growth? I was under the impression you need specific types for grow lights and these look like standard off the shelf LEDs

malux858• 1 year ago

I dont, they are just off the shelf components, this is not a serious project, it is a toy that I used to relax away from work.

voytec2• 1 year ago

this is not a serious project, it is a toy

You call it "cutting-edge" in the README.

troupo2• 1 year ago

What are those displays? Where can I get one?

zimpenfish• 1 year ago

From the photos, they seem to be DFRobot displays[0] ($55). PiHut has one matching the description[1] but it comes with a camera and is pricy (~$107). Amazon have a cheaper clone-brand option[2] (~$37). Aliexpress also has a wealth of cheap options for '7" DSI 800x480' (~$40-50).

[0] https://www.dfrobot.com/product-2193.html

[1] https://thepihut.com/products/7-dsi-capacitive-touch-display...

[2] https://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B0B8Y81Y6S

troupo2• 1 year ago

Thank you!

Now I'm itching to do something with them :)

gitroom• 1 year ago

this is super lit! i always mess up watering and stuff, so seeing you build all this around your plants kinda gives me ideas - you think all this tech actually changes how connected you feel to the whole growing thing?

malux858• 1 year ago

It sits on my desk right next to where I work every day, and it looks kinda sci-fi,

I was motivated by Star Trek a lot when I was very young, and having some futuristic bit of tech beside me while I work (that I created) reminds me that we are all working towards building that future, even just symbolically.

Building this gave me utter joy at learning CAD, figuring out electronics problems, understanding difficulties 3D printers have, finding electronic components here in NZ, figuring out bugs while typing commands like “restart sunlight” was amusing.

The final product is really just a byproduct and reminder, the primary source of joy is the act of creation

chris_engel• 1 year ago

Hm, you cannot simulate sunlight at all with an RGB LED ring. You can create something that looks cool for our human eyes but the average plant wouldnt make it long beneath them because its basically always living in the dark; the important wavelengths are missing.

This is also a huge problem for people having a terrarium with geckos or saurians - they see and need much different wavelengths than we humans do.

I am no expert for carnivorous plants - maybe they are fine but seeing that there is no UV emitting part in the lighting setup, there may be an important part of the spectrum missing for the plants.

malux858• 1 year ago

The lights beside it are grow lights to augment.

cenamus• 1 year ago

From skimming Wikipedia it seems like most absorption happens in the blue range and a bit less in red, almost nothing inbetween at green. Most LEDs are blue with a phosphor, so you usually get more blue light than the rest already.

But surely there are LEDs optimised for that task (Cannabis grow lights)

ash_091• 1 year ago

There are LEDs optimised for that purpose. Not strictly necessary though.

Someone I know had a very successful indoor cannabis grow using nothing but a cool white outdoor LED panel light from the local hardware store.

orphea• 1 year ago

You have resistive soil sensors. I'd recommend replacing them with capacitive sensors - they are much more reliable.

A good video with a short intro why resistive sensors suck, and what to pay attention to with capacitive sensors: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IGP38bz-K48

AtomicByte• 1 year ago

agree with dis ^

cushychicken• 1 year ago

A part of me really hopes to see this used as a prop in the upcoming Alien: Earth TV show.

SahAssar• 1 year ago

The Xenolab Rasp Pi Monitor is a cutting-edge, semi-autonomous biosurveillance module engineered for the precise care and observation of exotic carnivorous flora.

This sounds very solarpunk mixed with cyberpunk. I love it.

moffkalast• 1 year ago

Very nice, the UI is super sleek :)

Is the Pi 5 really necessary though, especially since it's one per plant? The Pi 4 would surely be up to the challenge of rendering that while using less power and would be cheaper.

malux858• 1 year ago

Thank you!

Originally, before I knew which plants I would use, I was going to use ML models to measure the surface area of the plants, and in earlier versions (before the camera) I had rotating, high polygon 3D models.

So I threw a bit more hardware at it than it needed because I didn’t want to have my future ideas limited by hardware

danesparza• 1 year ago

I'm just here to say kudos to your hardware integration build quality. I've worked on a few projects, and your setup looks VERY NICE. I would read a few blog articles if you posted about just your design and integration process.

malux858• 1 year ago

Thank you!

This is my first project where I integrated many things together, and it went through a few iterations (I replaced the lights twice)

I think the key was: patience

There were many times where I didn’t have the right connections, or screws, or cables or I needed more diodes when I probably could have got away without it - things like this - where I refused to take a shortcut, ordered the part in the mail and waited, which often meant I couldn’t proceed - so “that’s enough today”

Show HN: Xenolab – Rasp Pi monitor for my pet carnivourus plants

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