Category Instrumentation

Insights from building an MQTT based User Interface

November 27, 2015 · by · in Instrumentation, Programming, Raspberry Pi · 1 Comment

Note: Nov. 27, 2015, this is a quick first draft. I will be adding more details over the next few days including code snippets. Here are some insights gained from building an actual MQTT based UI. Using a system consisting of a Raspberry Pi 2 with Raspbian Jessie installed on an 8GB class 10 SD […]

Setting up a Raspberry Pi to work with OpenSprinkler (Old post)

December 14, 2012 · by · in Drip Irrigation, Instrumentation · 6 Comments

NOTE: This is a very old post and is only kept here for historical reasons. More recently I have been working on a Python port of the OpenSprinkler software which was originally written in C for an Ardino based sprinkler controller. The new software supports a simple plugin architecture for adding custom features. There is […]

A Homemade Atmometer

September 1, 2012 · by · in Instrumentation · 1 Comment

An atmometer is an instrument that measures evaporation and simulates transpiration by plants. It is an aid to irrigation scheduling and can also be useful for studying microclimates. It simulates plant transpiration by drawing water from a reservoir by capillary action then allowing the water to evaporate from a surface that is exposed to the […]