Today prototype boards from Eurocircuits arrived. The quality of this boards is outstanding. I do not know any other board house which delivers this incredible quality of boards. They really thrive for perfection.
Author: Lucky Resistor
Cat Feeder in Action
Recently I finished a small cat feeding device. Meanwhile I added some minor missing parts, like an USB port which can be used to charge the device. I also added a larger battery to keep the device running for months without charging. Here a short video demonstration of the project: Read more about the project…
Cat Feeder Device (Quick Build)
I finished a very simple and quick project recently. It is a programmable cat feeder device. The device is just made for one single portion, but it uses this slide which produces the distinctive sound if the pellets hit the bowl. It is no replacement for the usual feeding of the cat, but some flexible…
Plant Watering Sensor Files
There was a long delay with no update about my projects. The reason for this is, I focused on other non electronic related projects. I promised to publish all files and information about the plant watering sensor project in August, and here are all the files. First some Important Notes Even with these files, it…
How to Design a Cheap Plant Watering Sensor (Part 6)
This is the sixth part of the meta-tutorial, where I talk about designing a cheap plant watering sensor. If you did not already read the first, second, third, fourth and fifth part please do it now. These parts contain a lot information which lead to this point of the tutorial. The fifth part ended with step 24, where I talked about calculating the total…
Successful Measurements
Using the new method of measurement, described in this post, I could successfully collect some meaningful data. This time, the read values are the exact values of the final sensor without a different kind of oscillator. I watered the plant at day zero with quite a great amount of water. From there you can see…
Plant Watering Sensor – Long Term Tests Take #2
I started a second take on the long term tests for the plant watering sensor. This tests are required to be sure, the measurements follow the expected cycles. After watering the sensor, the frequency should go down and while the soil is drying up, the frequency should go up the the initial value. Logging this…
Plastic Cup Meltdown – Working with Epoxy
Currently I am working on the coating for the foot part of the plant watering sensor. Here I already tried a wide range of techniques and materials. At the moment, epoxy seems the perfect material choice – so I am trying different resins and hardeners to get the best results. Some hardeners are very reactive…
Plant Watering Sensor Foot Parts from Eurocircuits
I received the foot parts of the plant watering sensor from Eurocircuits. As you can see, they have the same great quality as the head parts. Eurocircuits removes any bridges from the boards in a very clean way, so you get the boards with exactly the shape you designed. This saves a lot of work…
No Success with First Long Term Measurement
The first long term measurement I made, to test the behaviour of the sensor over a longer time range was a failure. After the five days with the device introduced in this post, the readings made absolute no sense. The sensor was not moved in the flower pot and the plant was once watered at…