Kia ora! I’m just another solarpunk in Aotearoa looking for other like-minded friends, inspiration, and advice on other ways I can green up my life.
I live in an off-grid tiny home I built with my partner in 2016 out of wood and second-hand windows/doors/appliances. We run off solar power, rain water, a composting toilet, and try to repair, mend, make, borrow, and buy 2nd hand or local. Our meat is all hunted, which here in Aotearoa is a huge help for our environment as our only native mammals are seals and bats. Everything else is a pest. We also grow a lot of our own fruit and veggies, but the garden is still a work in progress.
I’m looking at irrigating the garden and automating the process. I saw something about https://www.home-assistant.io/ online but would love any advice you might have. I’d like to automate and chart my watering as well as integrate moisture monitors and a weather monitoring system.
I have an electric bike and an old 1996 honda crv. I’d like to switch to an electric vehicle, something like a Pickman 4x4 or another small farm vehicle, as I only need to get to the village bus stop, neighbouring farms, and the occasional trip into town via back roads.
Clothes are me-made with 2nd hand materials, mostly from the dump shop. I’ve helped start a collection point for alternative recycling like bottle lids and tetrapaks, a library of things, and a community workshop. We are working towards a bike repair hub and time bank but it might be a couple years before they are operational.
Please share all your inspiration, book recommendations, and thoughts around other ways I can make an impact in my community 😊
Regarding irrigation, while it’s not automation related, I enjoy Water for Every Farm: Yeomans Keyline Plan. In terms of charting and weather monitoring, I can share some different formulas and methods for calculating and tracking water budgets. I’ve written some R scripts to automate modeling water availability in my yard and can share how I did so if you’re interested!
Also, I write a blog about agriculture, landscapes, and sustainability, if you’re interested!
On the internet nobody knows you’re a duck.
I’m looking at irrigating the garden and automating the process. I saw something about https://www.home-assistant.io/ online but would love any advice you might have. I’d like to automate and chart my watering as well as integrate moisture monitors and a weather monitoring system.
Seriously though, if you’re looking into stuff like this, you should go asking questions around the Marijuana cultivation community. There’s actually been a massive upsurge in the last 5-7 years of projects using off the shelf components like Raspberry Pi’s to essentially automate their cannabis grows. Some of them are related to home assistant, some are standalone.
Each time I read about it I keep hoping that others will take that work and start extending it to other types of plants. Cannabis is great and all, but you can’t really eat it for sustenance, you know?
https://www.reddit.com/r/raspberry_pi/comments/a375ib/raspberry_pi_powered_cannabis_microgrowery/
Just some quick examples.
Also, you might try the /c/selfhosted community for information on things like home assistant and getting it up and running.
Though, be warned, home automation of this type can quickly end up increasing your electricity usage by a lot.
I have an electric bike and an old 1996 honda crv. I’d like to switch to an electric vehicle, something like a Pickman 4x4 or another small farm vehicle, as I only need to get to the village bus stop, neighbouring farms, and the occasional trip into town via back roads.
As for the old Honda CRV, if you know anyone that speaks Spanish/Portuguese or have an ability to translate either easily, South America has a whole history in the last ten years of converting old cars into EVs. I’d start looking for forums for those countries and poking around for conversion kits for your model.
https://restofworld.org/2024/electric-vehicle-conversions-uruguay/
doesn’t seem like it needs to increase the electric usage by that much, you only need a RasberryPi or equivalent to run the server, and you control everything with your phone… the outlets and solenoids shouldn’t need much power to do their thing. I saw earlier today how many options for EVs are available in South America (anywhere outside the US imperial core, actually) and it was a bit shocking. The conversion to EV business seems like a great idea - especially if they can standardize replacement parts that would be amazing.
Thanks!! That’s a great idea! I was nervous to go looking under those rocks as it’s still not legal here, and I don’t need the police in my garden. Those links look like exactly what I’m after. Is there a cannabis growing community here on lemmy I can chat with? Yeah, I’m all for people using cannabis if it helps them, but I think with us on the brink of climate collapse with failing soils… maybe it’s time we utilise some of that tech for local food systems.
I unfortunately couldn’t tell you which communities to search in, because it always seemed to pop up on my radar in random feeds on places like reddit, hackernews, and slashdot. hackernews and slashdot both have slightly better search functions than reddit. I just know on reddit they were usually marijuana-related communities.
https://www.raspberrypi.com/news/raspberry-pi-zero-waters-your-plants-and-records-growth-timelapse/
Here’s another example from some googling around that’s not cannabis-related but still a vegetation project. I’m sure there’s are variety of projects that exist that are just waiting to be discovered by someone with the time and patience to pursue it.
Thank you so much! Also thanks for car conversion write up! I’d love to do something live this with an old Suzuki Jimny.
I’ve not got anything useful to add but what you’re doing sounds awesome! Do you have a blog or anything?
Is this something you can do between work in your free time or is it a full time commitment?
I also had to look up where Aotearoa was as I’d never heard of it before, surprised to learn that it’s New Zealand! My sister has lived there for nearly 20 years and I’ve never heard the name!
I don’t have a blog but I do post little snippets on the big social media platforms. They aren’t super detailed as I’m trying to use my aesthetic appeal to drag unsuspecting viewers down my leftist rabbithole. I was going to revive my tumblr but I actually think just making posts and commenting around Lemmy is better. No follower metrics or corporate algorithms to worry about.
I’m currently an unemployed author under contract, but I don’t get paid until it’s out. The economy is rough here at the moment. My partner works in forestry, and I’m hoping to pick up a 2nd shift apple grading this autumn.
Aotearoa is her first name and what we as a people are slowly moving back to. This may or may not be related to it bumping us up above Australia in drop-down selection menus.
You’re living the absolute ideal and I salute you! I’d love to read more about your inspiration, struggles, and dream for the future.
Thank you! I genuinely hope you end up just as lucky. I’ll be posting more around here and other parts of Lemmy. I’m on other social media platforms, but it feels like people aren’t there to connect and engage anymore, so it’s become just another channel for mindless consumption.
You could try to cross post from the mainstreams socials to the fediverse. If you post to Instagram, you could try to cross post to pixelfed at the same time for example.
That’s a good idea! I hadn’t heard of pixelfed! I’ll see if I can enable cross posts and slowly shift all my stuff over.
How do you Internetl
4g on my phone!
I’ve been following you for a while on the mainstream socials, super cool to see you here! I love everything you’ve got going on! Good luck with the irrigation system, I’d love to do something similar in the future, and Home Assistant + ESPHome is certainly what I would use to control it.
Thank you so much 😊 I joined beehaw last year sometime but haven’t been as active as I’d have liked as I was drowning in local politics drama. I’m in a better space now.
I’m leaning towards home assistant but I’m looking into the grow op stuff to see if there is anything already built exactly how I’d like.
Fucking awesome! Thanks for your story!
Question: I want to live the same as you, or at least similar.
How much of your time do you spend for gathering food (farming, hunting), repairing, building, and other stuff?
Do you have a (company) job too?
How high are the costs of living for you compared to normal citizens?
Regarding plant automation stuff: maybe take a look at my post and consider !hydroponics@slrpnk.net. I made a post there introducing my semi-automated setup.
https://photon.slrpnk.net/post/14274316
If you are using soil, you can still learn something from it.
But as one other commentator mentioned, nobody else excels more in knowledge and automation than either stoners, or hydro guys, or in my case both ;)
I think setting up Home Assistant and full automation isn’t necessary.
I actually already have HA installed on my home server, but never planned using it for my balcony gardening, because hydro (and some soil pots with tray) is just set and forget, except maybe checking the EC and pH once a week or so.The soil mainly dries up when full sun is blasting on it, and over night it stays moist. Maybe you can use companion plants, moss or mulch, that reduces the surface evaporation A LOT.
Just having a few micro drippers, plugged into a rain collection system, and powered by a small cheap solar panel and USB pump is enough I believe.
By having constant small drips, you can save a lot of water! Even in open soil, not only pots!
If you want something commercial, there’s a pre-made microdrip system made from Gardena, but I don’t know if that’s available for you, and I find it a bit too expensive for my taste. https://www.gardena.com/int/products/watering/micro-drip-system
And it’s mainly made for tap water…Maybe even simpler would be the usage of a so called Olla, which is a teracotta pot that slowly releases water and was used for thousands of years in central America.
Home assistant is great for home automation stuff like lights and cameras and AC and such but for controlling your water system you might want something less complex / more purpose-designed. There are many arduino-based projects for doing exactly what you’re looking for - https://arduinogetstarted.com/tutorials/arduino-automatic-irrigation-system or https://www.instructables.com/Automatic-Plant-Watering-System-Using-Soil-Moistur/ are two i just looked up real quick. I’m sure it would be possible with assistant as well though if you just wanted to centralize.
I definitely want something centralised and that can document usage. Long-term, I’d like it to work alongside a moisture and weather monitoring system so that I can really maximise my water efficiency.
