Building an Arduino-powered, mobile-controlled irrigation system

http://www.stavros.io/posts/arduino-powered-irrigation-system/

by StavrosK • 12 years ago

62 20 12 years ago

Aardwolf• 12 years ago

How secure is it to connect an Arduino to the internet? Does it support any secure protocols?

bagels• 12 years ago

Besides secure protocols, if these things are widely deployed in this manner, I'm imagining stack overflow attacks that seem impossible to avoid in some uses of C and C++.

plumeria3• 12 years ago

You can use the Standard Firmdata sketch, and then use whatever you want. For example, Node.js with Jhonny-five: https://github.com/rwaldron/johnny-five

I use it together with a pcDuino and it works like a charm.

tdicola2• 12 years ago

Not directly--with only 32kb of program space in the Arduino Uno you can just barely get a wifi stack in (see the CC3000 chip), but there's no room left for SSL or anything secure.

A better option is something like the Arduino Yun which has two processors, a small Atmel microcontroller and an Atheros system on a chip running OpenWRT linux. The linux processor can act as a bridge to let the microcontroller communicate with the internet pretty easily.

runjake• 12 years ago

At that point, just use a RaspberryPi unless you're specifically doing it for the challenge of it. Arduino is fun though.

javan• 12 years ago

There's also https://www.spark.io/

jmspring• 12 years ago

I would be leery to put an arduino directly on a public ip, best to have some home bastion server you log into then access your private network.

This advice goes for many other set ups as well.

louwrentius• 12 years ago

I really like how this kind of technology is finally very cheap and even usable for non-experts.

However, why is it that this kind of electronics is only ever used to irrigate plants, open/close doors or windows and maybe control lights in a room.

The arduino platform seems very popular, yet where are the really amazing projects? It really seems like it's just some kind of Lego for grownups. I bought some of this stuff too and it is cool to play with electronics, but it seems to me this stuff is merely good for learning electronics and just a fun hobby.

StavrosK• 12 years ago

What sort of project do you have in mind, for example?

tdicola2• 12 years ago

I've done some fun stuff with Arduinos, but sadly when I try to post it here it never makes it to the front page. For example check out this smart cocktail shaker project that uses Arduino & Android with a kitchen scale: http://learn.adafruit.com/smart-cocktail-shaker

malandrew• 12 years ago

Cool project, this combined with a database where you told it what ingredients you had available and it told you all the drink recipes that are you can possibly make would be killer for learning new drinks at home. Furthermore, also suggesting ingredients you should add to your bar next to maximize the number of new recipes available to you would be amazing. Add the ability to keep track of what you tried and your ability to add star ratings per drink would be an amazing product. I can think of few better ways to explore the world of cocktails and keep track of what you really enjoy in a drink.

mbrameld• 12 years ago

There's a pretty sizeable community that uses them to fly model aircraft: http://ardupilot.com/

platz• 12 years ago

There was a post today about making your own keyboard on HN today; I think that qualifies? But otherwise I tend to agree with you, from what I've seen so far.

hershel• 12 years ago

In general, thinking about amazing embedded projects of reasonable scope is quite hard.It's like inventing a new product. You can see phenomena this also is final year undergraduate projects in electronic engineering - very few are "amazing".

But still, some nice ones:

http://www.instructables.com/id/20-Unbelievable-Arduino-Proj...

http://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2013/05/11-ard...

robryk• 12 years ago

It seems to me that the following is liable to misclassify some pressure drop events as normal shutoffs: > } else if ((statesChanged[2] == 1 && pinStates[2] == OFF) && > (statesChanged[3] == 1 && pinStates[3] == OFF)) {

We look at the relay outputs twice a second and expect to see two of them switch within the same half-second in some cases. Even if they were actually depowered at the same instant in time, you'd often get a tens of millis window when one of them is already off, but the other isn't; then (irrespective of which was off first) you'd get a "Pump stopped" notification instead of a "Pressure dropped" notification. Am I missing something obvious or is that case just rare enough that handling it isn't worth the complexity?

vkatluri• 12 years ago

Indian farmers were doing something similar back in 2009: http://www.pcworld.com/article/168895/article.html

Building an Arduino-powered, mobile-controlled irrigation system

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