Exploring gardening system platforms
In this section, we will explore some gardening systems that could be used with our board, such as Arduino and Raspberry Pi. Some manufacturers provide kits that you can use directly in your project.
We will review three gardening system platforms that you may fit with your case.
Open Garden shield for Arduino
Open Garden shield for Arduino is manufactured by Cooking Hacks. This shield provides I/O connectors for gardening and farming sensors. It also includes an RF module with 433 MHz frequency. For further information about this shield, you can visit the official website at https://www.cooking-hacks.com/open-garden-shield-for-arduino. You can see this shield here:
Cooking Hacks provides a complete kit that you can use with Arduino directly. Currently, there are three kits. Each kit has unique features, including sensors and tools. The following is a list of Open Garden kits:
- Indoor kit: http://www.cooking-hacks.com/open-garden-indoor-1node-1gw
- Outdoor kit: http://www.cooking-hacks.com/open-garden-outdoor-1node-1gw
- Hydroponics kit: http://www.cooking-hacks.com/open-garden-hydroponics
You can see a sample Open Garden kit for indoor use here:
Grove Smart Plant Care kit for Arduino
SeeedStudio has popular products called Grove. It makes it easier for you to connect your board to various sensor and actuator devices. Currently, SeeedStudio provides the Grove Smart Plant kit for Arduino. This kit consists of temperature, humidity, soil moisture, and illumination intensity sensors. To connect these sensors, the kit provides a Grove Base shield that you can attach to Arduino.
You can buy this kit on the official website, https://www.seeedstudio.com/Grove-Smart-Plant-Care-Kit-for-Arduino-p-2528.html. One type of Grove smart plant care kit for Arduino is shown here:
EcoDuino
EcoDuino is a gardening kit from DFRobot. This kit consists of an MCU board and sensors. The board also provides an RF module breakout in an XBee breakout model. It enables the board to communicate with other platforms. The kit comes with soil moisture, temperature, and humidity (DHT11) sensors. If you're interested in this kit, you can buy it from this website: https://www.dfrobot.com/product-641.html.
The EcoDuino kit is shown in the following image:
