All it takes is one little seed. One tiny little seed, that when planted into the ground and nourished correctly, can flourish into a healthy and happy plant. But there are some challenges involved. For example, maintaining a steady temperature and keeping moisture at an optimum level can be difficult at times, especially when just starting out.

This Arduino grow-op monitoring solution helps to solve those problems. It was built by [growershower] as a fun side project to monitor the vital signs of 3 marijuana plants. The board is an Uno and has an SD card shield with a DHT22 temperature sensor plus a soil moisture sensor. A photo diode is also used to measure light.

The graph produced from the data is a weed grower’s wet dream:

Humidity, temperature, moisture, and light can all be regularly logged into the system. This empirical data gathering is key for keeping track of how the plants are doing, giving the grower the option to make educated changes.

Obviously these sensors and the attached cables are not waterproof, so they need to be removed when watering, which is very inconvenient. However, this system will be refined over time as more people contribute to the design. [growershower] plans to seal the electronics with some sort of resin for the next grow. In addition, the use of a Raspberry Pi instead of an Arduino will allow [growershower] to check the data in real time remotely through a web browser.

The next steps after all that will be to run the lights and ventilation. Watering schedules could be included as well. Just be careful when adding H2O into the equation, especially when dealing with the high voltages associated with grow lights. You don’t want to accidentally zap yourself into oblivion! Safety first. Safety first.

EDITORIAL NOTE: The editorial staff chose to publish this post after considering the following items: First, the gathering and graphing of data by this project is both interesting and useful in other applications. Second, the cultivation of marijuana is legal in some jurisdictions.