I am a plant lady. This happened during the pandemic, I’ll spare you the details, but suffice to say I have more plants than I can really handle.

Between my aeroponics towers, my hydroponics houseplants, my fungus grows, and all my live cultures (kombucha, kefir, yogurt, sourdough) my weekends are filled with housework. For most of the hydroponic and aeroponic arrangements, I need to do some tasks every week:

• check the pH
• check the ppm
• check the temp
• check the roots

For the live cultures, there’s a similar process:

• check the temp
• adjust sensors as needed

And of course, the mushrooms have similar requirements:

• check the temperature
• check the humidity
• check the stage and adjust temperature and humidity if it’s time to fruit.

This is a LOT for me to keep track of and it’s really preventing me from doing other things with my life… Like building more cool coding projects. Luckily, I was recently hired at a home automation company and have been learning Elixir in the context of IOT home automation.

On top of that, my climate concerns continue and my electricity bills seems to be growing each day.

An idea is born…

What if I can automate my house? Not in a pre-defined already existing framework kind of way, that would defeat the point of the exercise IMO. But in a custom, private way?

I’m envisioning a system that I build that will help me:

• manage the temperature of individual rooms
• get the pH of my aeroponic towers *
• get the ppm of the towers *
• monitor mushroom chamber humidity *
• monitor mushroom chamber temperature *
• monitor lights and:
  • turn them off when someone leaves the room
  • switch to red light at night
  • any other efficiency gains
• because I’d like to adjust these all as needed, but that may have to be a phase two of the project.

I already know some of the technologies I’d like to use. A raspberry pi or arduino for a central hub, I’d get to build an app for my phone to control the system and get insights, I’d like to use z-wave for the project as well.

Seeing as I already have a dream of an Eartship, automated farmbot, and a nearly net zero existence, this seems in line with my goals and like a fun side project - so stay tuned as I stumble through.