Host a Demo Site

[danfinlay]

I think it's really smart to keep a version of this running on a public web server, so people can come in and try it out and get a sense of it without necessarily owning a RasPi or the sprinkler board.

[ch0wdan]

I am open to this idea. In fact i think its a great idea! I would love(as a consumer) to be able to see what this is prior to compiling and spending time to set it up to see what this is all about.

[ch0wdan]

I'm working on spinning up a demo site. Of course its built on a fork of mine so as i move forward in development, it will start to change a bit more than this one, however i am contemplating spinning one up that will follow the progression of this github.

You can view my hosted one at: www.greenmangrow.net

PS: there are issues that occur, however it gives a very BASIC idea of this project.

[tony-osp]

Pretty cool!

ch0wdan, what are the modifications of your version of the code?

[ch0wdan]

@tony-osp My plan is to rework the UI of the whole system. I have a few ideas in mind, however the day job has been pushing me pretty hard so haven't been able to fully commit to making these changes. They will come, just a lot slower than i would like to have.

Currently the site has no changes, however over time ill be rolling them out.

[tony-osp]

Thanks ch0wdan.

I also have forked version of Richard's code, it is significantly modified now - I added local UI (LCD + buttons), sensors data collection and graphing, and I'm working on multi-station version (using Xbee RF modules). My version of the code is running on Arduino Mega right now, but it is portable to pretty much any platform - no significant platform dependencies.

Right now I'm using original Richard's WEB UI for the core (plug Highcharts for sensors graphing), but I'm looking for alternative WEB UIs for it - something more optimized for the desktop. If you will be working on one, I would love to learn more.

[ch0wdan]

@tony-osp

I didn't get a chance to see your fork. Will definitely go through to see what you've done. I'm actually in the market for an arduino board specifically for this project.

A few thoughts i had come up with was the homepage that you see should contain "plugins" that users can select to show for graphing of different things(water consumption, watering timings on an X minute time scale, watering lengths, projected watering times just to name a few). Granted this wouldn't be able to be done on a mobile platform for the front page but on a desktop variant you can do something like this.

I'm not sure if you've worked with JIRA, however their Dashboard style is what i'm thinking of. Sample image of Jira: http://atlassian.wpengine.netdna-cdn.com/wp-content/uploads/example-killer-dashboard1.png

[tony-osp]

Hi Ch0wdan

A few thoughts i had come up with was the homepage that you see should contain "plugins" that users can select to show for graphing of different things(water consumption, watering timings on an X minute time scale, watering lengths, projected watering times just to name a few).

Yes, this is pretty much what I'm trying to do as well. I put together basic infrastructure for sensors data collection (temperature, air pressure, water flow etc), with the ability to get the data as JSON or CSV. JSON works really well for visualizations like the dashboard you mentioned (I put together few prototypes using Highcharts, but several other libraries work well as well), CSV is good for data import into Excel and further analysis.

If you have plans to put together UIs of this type - I would love to copy yours.

Currently I'm using standard Arduino Mega 2560 with 1602 LCD and W5100 Ethernet, it works pretty well. Sensors data and other logs are stored on MicroSD card. But the code is readily portable, I'm thinking about moving to a more powerful MCU for the Master station.

My sources are available on: github.com/tony-osp/OpenSprinkler-experiments/tree/master/sprinklers_avr

Multi-station stuff (that uses Xbee RF for communicaiton) is not ready yet, I'm still working on it.

[ch0wdan]

When i get home tonight, ill spinup a sub-domain and check out your system:)

I do have plans of creating a UI setup, so once its complete I can send a PR to you!

My ultimate goal for my project is creating an easy to use, easy to setup, and easy to manage fully automated system. I would like to have a homepage that users can login and check their specific account/automated system. All of their data will be stored on servers in the backend that we will have access to. With that information, we could do so much with ranging from predicting future watering times, future potential deficiencies/sickness with the plants and warn users based on our findings and even provide solutions.

If we go even further, we can even go beyond warning and actually taking action IF we are controlling the nutrient supplies. But thats at least what im thinking for the future. For now I need to focus on getting the UI system revamped.

[tony-osp]

Hi Ch0wdan, this sounds like a great plan!

I will be happy to help to hook up controller to your cloud system and adopt good UI.

[ch0wdan]

Awesome! I noticed your located in Seattle! I am too!

Since this is a public repo, not going to post my personal email, however send me a email to info@greenmangrow.net and I'll respond to you via my personal mail.

One thing i've been thinking about is, can we use the rasp pi for more processing/storage than with an ardunio?

I have no experience with ardunio so i'm a complete noob with it.

[nhorvath]

Cleaning out old issues I saw this and it's a good idea. Demo site here: http://kilby.kewlshells.com:8080/