[HN Gopher] Show HN: Watering my Christmas tree with ESPHome
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Show HN: Watering my Christmas tree with ESPHome
Author : johnz
Score : 39 points
Date : 2023-12-10 17:30 UTC (5 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (johnzanussi.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (johnzanussi.com)
| LeafItAlone wrote:
| I love this. Great work!
|
| I've thought about doing the same thing for years. But in my
| experience, those cheap capacitive sensors fail quickly. Might be
| worse when the water gets all sappy or filled with needles.
|
| What sort of fail safe do you have for when the sensor becomes
| inaccurate?
| johnz wrote:
| Thanks!
|
| No fail-safe besides the limit of only running the pump for 10
| seconds at a time. I will continue to keep an eye on the data
| being pumped to Home Assistant and look to add a condition
| if/when the sensor fails.
| analog31 wrote:
| You're on your way!
|
| Part of the joy of process control is thinking about all of
| the ways that things can fail. Adding to your woes...
|
| Relays can fail, and it's actually a common failure mode for
| them to get stuck in the "closed" position, meaning that your
| pump runs forever. I learned this the hard way controlling
| heaters.
|
| Amusing anecdote: I wanted to set something up to water my
| tree while my family was on a trip, and I ended up with a
| large pail of water next to the tree and a siphon tube
| running between them. Totally passive.
| wferrell wrote:
| What a great post. Thank you!
| johnz wrote:
| Cheers!
| buildsjets wrote:
| I bought one of these off Amazon a few years ago, called the
| HoHoHoH20.
|
| https://www.amazon.com/HoHoHoH2o-Automatic-Christmas-Waterin...
| johnz wrote:
| That is what inspired me to try building something myself. How
| do you like it? Does it have any reliability issues?
| 33a wrote:
| I built something like this but found that the electric arduino
| water sensor quickly became corroded after a week and a half and
| ended up replacing it with a float switch.
| johnz wrote:
| Good to know. I thought about using both a float switch and an
| ultrasonic distance sensor.
| ge96 wrote:
| They have capacitive moisture sensors too
| tehwebguy wrote:
| Make sure to read up or watch a YouTube video about which
| ones are trash, though, since they mostly look alike (and
| some can be solved with a bit of soldering).
| sircastor wrote:
| A number of years ago I set up a siphon tube running into our
| Christmas tree stand from a nearby bucket. The bucket had a false
| --gift wrapped box over it to hide it. Through some empirical
| testing I found the right water height for the stand and marked
| it with tape.
|
| I wanted to make an electronic solution, but I think this fared
| better than whatever code I could write.
| csdvrx wrote:
| The tech is interesting, but what I like even more is that it may
| increase the chances of survival of the tree if the root ball
| hasn't been cut!
|
| I hope there will be an effort to collect and replant Christmas
| trees, as the cultural practice of cutting down tree and letting
| them die slowly in front of us (just for our seasonal enjoyment!)
| strikes me as barbaric.
| sgerenser wrote:
| The trees are planted and farmed specifically to be Christmas
| trees. If nobody bought them, they wouldn't be planted in the
| first place, so the act of cutting down then disposing of a
| Christmas tree has no net impact to the overall tree population
| (barring the small amount of Clark Griswolds out there who get
| their tree from a forest somewhere rather than a Christmas tree
| farm).
| csdvrx wrote:
| > If nobody bought them, they wouldn't be planted in the
| first place, so the act of cutting down then disposing of a
| Christmas tree has no net impact to the overall tree
| population
|
| From a carbon capture perspective, you could argue planting,
| cutting then burying trees is a net positive - but cutting is
| killing.
|
| From a moral perspective, financially helping an industry
| based on planting and cutting trees while not using them for
| shelter (wood is used in housing) or even heat (in a stove or
| a fireplace) strikes me as barbaric, because it's the
| purposeless killing of a living creature.
|
| Killing and eating animals (if not vegan) or plants (if
| vegan) is necessary as we can't opt out of food (but maybe
| there will be a fully synthetic replacement someday)
|
| Yet I can opt out of killing trees for ornamental purposes -
| and this tech may help other people save trees, if they can't
| opt out of having a live Christmas tree, say for cultural or
| familial reasons (tradition, etc)
| ge96 wrote:
| I wonder if they can cut the top off and let the rest grow
| invalidator wrote:
| I love ESPHome. The declarative language makes it fun and easy to
| do so many little tasks like this. Used with Home Assistant it
| makes it easy to create graphs of everything. Do I NEED to know
| how much water my tree consumes? No, but I like seeing it anyway!
|
| When controlling physical systems I try to limit the damage they
| can do with simple interlocks. For instance, the relay I added to
| control my central heat is in series with a conventional
| thermostat which is set for a few degrees above pleasant.
|
| Likewise, you can splice a float switch in line with the pump's
| power cable, positioned so it will cut off power if the water
| level nears the top of the tree stand. This will prevent the
| flood when the software decides to rebel against you.
| johnz wrote:
| My thoughts exactly on using ESPHome.
|
| My familiarity with float switches is limited to boats. Any you
| would recommend for this application?
| sokoloff wrote:
| A condensate safety drain switch is appropriate here.
|
| Something like this: https://www.supplyhouse.com/Beckett-
| Pumps-1502UR-Float-Safet...
|
| or
|
| https://www.supplyhouse.com/Little-
| Giant-599124-ACS-3-Auxili...
| snthd wrote:
| Why choose a pump over a siphon?
| ianlevesque wrote:
| I love it, but if you just want to water a tree the siphons work
| really really well.
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