I bought a Venus fly trap about 10 years ago, and recall wanting to stick some RGB LEDs on an “Arduino or something” to get them to turn on and off in sync with the sun. I was hung up on the idea that this is in my windowsill, so the data on sunrise and sunset I could get from a photoresistor. It would also monitor moisture.
This is so cool!
I need this! I am struggling to grow carnivorous plants in New Zealand. I think I am giving them what they supposedly need but I just can’t win.
That's cool, but I'm curious how you determine that the LED's output the right wavelengths for plant growth? I was under the impression you need specific types for grow lights and these look like standard off the shelf LEDs
I have some venus fly traps, they are suspended from the side a of a fish tank with the bottom of their container in the (presumably nutritious for them) fish water. Unrelated to blackrabbit17s setup, home assistant controls the lights and pumps.
> The Xenolab Rasp Pi Monitor is a cutting-edge, semi-autonomous biosurveillance module engineered for the precise care and observation of exotic carnivorous flora.
This sounds very solarpunk mixed with cyberpunk. I love it.
I can appreciate the engineering but damn this look extreme.
My carnivorous plants are by the window and I water them once in a while, never had issue.
I thought about automating water supply but even me, a geek, realized it would be a waste of time.
I'm just here to say kudos to your hardware integration build quality. I've worked on a few projects, and your setup looks VERY NICE. I would read a few blog articles if you posted about just your design and integration process.
Hm, you cannot simulate sunlight at all with an RGB LED ring. You can create something that looks cool for our human eyes but the average plant wouldnt make it long beneath them because its basically always living in the dark; the important wavelengths are missing.
This is also a huge problem for people having a terrarium with geckos or saurians - they see and need much different wavelengths than we humans do.
I am no expert for carnivorous plants - maybe they are fine but seeing that there is no UV emitting part in the lighting setup, there may be an important part of the spectrum missing for the plants.
You might also be interested in this - https://docs.backyardbrains.com/retired/experiments/Plants_V... where they monitor the electrical spikes of the traps.
You can also apparently electrically trigger the closing of fly trap - https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.4161/psb.2.3.4217
Great work! It would be interesting to have a side by side comparison with a plant grown without monitoring.
That’s really cool. Thanks for sharing.
Very nice, the UI is super sleek :)
Is the Pi 5 really necessary though, especially since it's one per plant? The Pi 4 would surely be up to the challenge of rendering that while using less power and would be cheaper.
Impressive work for monitoring some plants! I hope they don’t bite you :)
I had two carnivorous plants so far, but they all died after 3 months or so. I need to learn how to better care for them, cause I think they are so cool.
A part of me really hopes to see this used as a prop in the upcoming Alien: Earth TV show.
this is super lit! i always mess up watering and stuff, so seeing you build all this around your plants kinda gives me ideas - you think all this tech actually changes how connected you feel to the whole growing thing?
What are those displays? Where can I get one?
You have resistive soil sensors. I'd recommend replacing them with capacitive sensors - they are much more reliable.
A good video with a short intro why resistive sensors suck, and what to pay attention to with capacitive sensors: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IGP38bz-K48