The Internet of Things leads to yet another Growduino

We are on the verge of the Internet of Things, where simple devices can now automatically and intelligently trigger an action in the real physical world.

It’s going to be a pretty neat transition, as big as the invention of the computer mainframe in the 50's, the PC 30 years ago, and the opening of the Internet to the general public in the 90’s. How big is that? Well to start with, the Gartner Group estimates that 20% of the Internet’s non-video traffic will be sensor data. Oh , and that is only by 2012. But the report also states that it’s a lot like trying to predict the market for plastics in the 1940’s. No one knew how pervasive they would become and be used in just about every consumer product.

Check out the full Hammersmith report if you like, but if you really want to experience the future of the Internet of Things, begin your search at the Pachube site and maybe pick yourself up an arduino from Lady Ada.

Here's my arduino-pachube project - an attempt to grow the spiciest of all peppers, the Bhut Jolokia:

An arduino was used to collect information from various plant sensors (lighting level, temperature, soil moisture, and humidity) and control a bank of A/C electrical outlets.

 

 Sensors were soldered to the ends of phone cables so they could easily be jacked into the Growduino enclosure.

Heaters, Automatic Watering Pumps, Fans, Lights, and more can all be plugged in to control the perfect environment for the Bhut Jolokia pepper plant - one of the hardest plants to grow but according to the Guiness Book of World Records it's also the hottest pepper plant known to man.

Although the system is totally autonomous in nature (no pun intended) the arduino has the information necessary to control the perfect temperature, humidity, and soil conditions and be interfaced to the Internet.

Once connected to the internet it can do so much more.  Here's a quick VB app I whipped up to upload data to both a twitter account and a pachube feed. An arduino network shield would have been nice but they are about $50 and an old PC is free.

We already had a touchscreen mounted to the kitchen wall for controlling all the home automation stuff, so viewing it at a glance throughout the day is easy enough.  And for when we're not home, all the twitter and pachube updates to go my phone running the Google Android O/S.

Total cost was about $60 for all the electronic equipment and piece of melamine board to build the growduino enclosure. I'm not sure what the next step will be, but it might be interesting if someone in the Assam region of India (the origin of this pepper variety) were to hook up an arduino to some weather sensors, publish it to a pachube feed, which I could use as an output to my arduino parameters.  It would thereby replicate the exact weather conditions of Northern India in the basement of my home here in Canada.  The bhut's might like that.

Check out cheap vegetable gardener, Luke Iseman, messingwithhardy, and forge for similar projects.