jennajane | FarmHack

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12 years 6 months

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Forum comment

Ok, I think this might work,

Ok, I think this might work, I found a 3/4 hp jet pump on sale, and drew up a schematic for how it should work. The jet pump comes with electronic pressure control, which I am curious to see how it works. The idea is... 1) Under light use the pump in the house provides enough pressure that the jet pump doesn't kick in. 2) The water cube is always full because of the float valve, if the cube goes empty then the float switch cuts the power to the pump. 3) Under heavy use at the wash station, the jet pump turns on, closes the check valve and provides enough pressure at the wash station. I am hoping to take it to my local plumber tomorrow to see what he thinks, but the veggies are starting to come in from the field and we are already beginning to feel the lack of water pressure when there are 2+ farmers washing. jenna

Forum comment

I moved things forward on the

I moved things forward on the onion seedling room project. It took a while but I finally got an arduino sketch that works to control the powerswitch tails. Also after some net searching it seems 14-16 hours is a good amount of time to leave the lights on. I connected the 'in+' of the powerswitch tails to digital pins 8 and 9 and the 'in-' to ground. The stripped down sketch for the timer looks like this:

 
     // Program .....: RTC_Relay
     // Author ......: Jenna Jacobs (adapted from Joe Pitz, Objetek Systems, objetek@gmail.com)
     // Copyright ...: Creative Commons, CC BY-SA 
     // Description .: Turn on and off two power switch tail 2s
     // Date Created.: 3/20/2013
     // Usage and dependencies:
     //
     // Variables are used to set start time and end time.
     // Times are based on 24 hour clock, i.e.: 
     // 1:00 pm = 13:00 and Midnight is 00:00
     //
     // Start time must be less than end time and both times must fall within the 
     // same 24 hour period.
     //
     // Code uses RTCLIB, a branch provided from:
     // https://github.com/adafruit/RTClib
     //


     #include 
     #include "RTClib.h"

     RTC_DS1307 RTC;

     // Setup Start and End TImes
     // This is where you define your start hour and start minute times

     unsigned int StartHr = 7;
     unsigned int StartMin = 30;

     unsigned int EndHr = 22;
     unsigned int EndMin = 30;

     // This is where we create a combined time in Day minutes (the number
     // of minutes since the start of the day)
     unsigned int DayMin = 0;
     unsigned int StartDayMin = (StartHr*60) + StartMin;
     unsigned int EndDayMin = (EndHr*60) + EndMin;

     // ledPin used for debug using Arduino on board LED.
     int ledPin = 13;

     // Pins used to control powerswitch tails (pst)
     int pstPin1 = 8;         // Set our LED pin
     int pstPin2 = 9;         // Set our LED pin
     
     void setup () {
         Serial.begin(9600);
         Wire.begin();
         RTC.begin();
    
         pinMode(pstPin1, OUTPUT);
         pinMode(pstPin2, OUTPUT);
    
         RTC.adjust(DateTime(__DATE__, __TIME__));

       if (! RTC.isrunning()) {
         Serial.println("RTC is NOT running!");
         // following line sets the RTC to the date & time this sketch was compiled
         RTC.adjust(DateTime(__DATE__, __TIME__));
       }
     }

     void loop () {
         DateTime now = RTC.now();
    
    DayMin = (now.hour()*60)+now.minute();
    
         Serial.println();    
         Serial.println();
         Serial.print(now.year(), DEC);
         Serial.print('/');
         Serial.print(now.month(), DEC);
         Serial.print('/');
         Serial.print(now.day(), DEC);
         Serial.print(' ');
         Serial.print(now.hour(), DEC);
         Serial.print(':');
         Serial.print(now.minute(), DEC);
         Serial.print(':');
         Serial.print(now.second(), DEC);
         Serial.println();
         Serial.print(StartHr);
         Serial.print(':');
         Serial.print(StartMin);
         Serial.print(" to ");
         Serial.print(EndHr);
         Serial.print(':');
         Serial.print(EndMin);
         Serial.println();

    

         // Check status of light
           if (DayMin >= StartDayMin && DayMin  EndDayMin)  
           { 
             // turn on lights      
             digitalWrite(pstPin1, HIGH);
             digitalWrite(pstPin2, HIGH);

             Serial.print(" Lights On"); 
 
           }
    
         else
         {
             // turn light off
             digitalWrite(pstPin1, LOW);
             digitalWrite(pstPin2, LOW);
        
             Serial.print(" Lights Off");  
         }
    
          delay(3000);

     }

I have incorporated this into the temperature datalogger I have documented in the tools section and will add documentation there. Jenna

Forum comment

Hi, I started farming last

Hi, I started farming last year in Quebec, Canada and had a big year. I am the founding member of a cooperative farm with 2 other women. I am in charge of machinery and infrastructure here on the farm (among other things). Last year I led the building of a 3000sqft greenhouse, a veggie wash station, a 140 sqft cold room powered by 2 cool bots, a 150 sqft chicken coop and purchased $12k in machinery. I am hoping this year is a bit slower, but have dreams of buying/building a bit more equipment, a bed former, a toolbar with sweeps, building a pedal-powered root washer, and a pedal-powered salad spinner. I am interested in Arduino based projects to control things all over the farm, but especially in the greenhouse. We run an certified organic CSA, and currently have about 40 laying hens, and raised 2 veal cows last year. We do a 19 week summer season and a 14 week winter season. We are La ferme cooperative aux champs qui chantent (Singing Fields Cooperative Farm).