rjksn / pigrow

Raspberry Pi Grow Box Control Software

Pigrow

Raspberry Pi Grow Box Control Software

The Pigrow is an automation devices designed to help gardeners monitor, log, graph and control their grow space using a raspberry Pi, a DHT22 sensor and a few relay modules. All software, designs and content are shared with open-source licenses, it's free to make and cheap to buy.

For more information visit;

 https://www.patreon.com/Pigrow

 https://www.reddit.com/r/Pigrow/

#Work in Progress

The Pigrow is currently undergoing development and a full and stable release is due soon, but when soon is who knows... In the meantime, the pigrow is fully working and in use on several boxes all giving great results. The timelapse feature, automatic control and logging of devices and etc have all been well tested however the configuration can be complex and confusing at times. The remote gui is the current priority as this will make the whole process very simple.

#How to Pigrow...

First you need the hardware, follow the build guide available on the www.reddit.com/r/Pigrow/wiki/index for the most recent instructions.

When you have a working raspberry pi connected to your network and the appropriate sensors and relays you can either use the GUI [work in progress] or connect to the pi via an SSH command line terminal or with the pi plugged into a screen, keyboard and mouse.

#First Steps

Assuming you have an internet connected Pi and you're logged in via ssh or using it with a keyboard and screen attached;

First you need to install the software, to do that clone the git repository using the command

 git clone https://github.com/Pragmatismo/Pigrow

this will copy all the files into /home/pi/Pigrow, now run the setup program

cd Pigrow/scripts/config
./setup.py

this opens a text menu offering a number of options, the first is install dependences select it by typing 1 and pressing return, this will download and install all the resources and dependences for the Pigrow, it may take a while.

Your Pigrow is now ready for use.

#Setting up a Webcam and starting a Timelapse

run the webcam config script found in the /Pigrow/scripts/config/ folder and follow the instructions until you're happy with the image captured by your camera when in the lighting conditions you intend to use it in - remember SAVE your settings once you're happy with them.

run setup.py and select cron run scripts, then select repeating scripts and follow the prompts to choose the camera capture script and repeat rate of your choice -- at the moment your best choice is probably camcap.py every five min.

once this is set your pi will start taking images every N amount of time, this will keep happening even if you restart your pi so to stop it you need to come back into setup.py and remove the cron job which triggers the camera, this can also be done via the reddit message-control script and soon the remote gui.

From the pi you can run Pigrow/scripts/visulaisation/timelapse_assemble.py to construct a timelapse, run the script with the flag -h to get a full list of command line options and some usage instructions. This script can also be run from a linux machine with MPV installed when the files have been downloaded manually or they can be automatically downloaded using the remote gui and the timelapse made using that [work in progress]

#Everything else

should be fairly obvious or isn't yet finished, any questions message me on the pigrow sub.

#old and wrong stuff

The following is out of date but sections of it may still be useful,

---

#scripts to be called by cron;

To add a one of the following timelapse programs to cron simply use;

   sudo crontab -e

and at the bottom of the file after the explanation of how it works add the line;

   */1 * * * * python /home/pi/Pigrow/scripts/camcap_text_simple.py

This will run the script and take an image every one min.

          Camera -
                 - camcap.py - captures just a single image for
                 - camcap_text_simple.py - captures image and adds date and sensor data to it.
        !!!!     - camcap_text_colour.py - text colour changes according to sensor data.

To set up a 12:12 light cycle simple add the two lines;

 0 10 * * * python /home/pi/pigrow3/lamp_on.py
 0 22 * * * python /home/pi/pigrow3/lamp_off.py     

This turns the lamp on at ten am and off at ten pm. Try not to turn on fans and lamps at exactly the same time, it will work but both items cause power-spikes which if combined might trip your RCD.

          Relay -
                - lamp_on / off - actuates lamp relay
                - fan_on / off - for manual timing of fan
                - heat_on / off - for manual timing of heat
                - dehumi_on / off - for manual timing of dehumidifier

These scripts are run periodically as with the camera scripts to check the health of the pi or it's friend, you can check many pi's by calling the script many times.

    Sanity Check -
                 - self_awareness - sensor log, camera, health check
                 - nosey_neighbour - check on a brother pigrow

Scripts to be constantly running;

This is some init.d business i'll be back to explain once the script is uploaded...

      autorunlog.py - logs sensor data to file, switches heaters or fans according to sensor data

------- Useful information which might be needed before release of setup scripts

#Installing 3rd party software commands;

--Adafruit DHT sensor drivers,

git clone https://github.com/adafruit/Adafruit_Python_DHT.git
cd Adafruit_Python_DHT
sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install build-essential python-dev python-openssl
sudo python setup.py install

  -more information at, https://learn.adafruit.com/dht-humidity-sensing-on-raspberry-pi-with-gdocs-logging/software-install-updated

--From linux Repository

 sudo apt-get install uvccapture           #for use with camera

 sudo pip install pexpect                  #for use when logging other pigrows health

 sudo apt-get install python-matplotlib    #for making graphs

 sudo apt-get install sshpass              #for downloadinging images

 sudo apt install mpv                      #for rendering timelapse movies

 pip install python-crontab                #for config of timelapse and relay timing

-on systems other than Raspbian you may also need;

 sudo apt-get install python-pip           #for adding python modules
 pip install pillow                        #PIL the Python Image Library (for camera capture scripts that edit image)
 sudo apt-get install gpicview             #used by the config program (non-vital, easy to change-out in the code)

#directory structure

        mkdir /home/pi/Pigrow/logs
        mkdir /home/pi/Pigrow/config
        mkdir /home/pi/Pigrow/graphs
        mkdir /home/pi/cam_caps

#to set timed events using cron (the semi-manual way)

 crontab -e

lines to include might look like;

 0 7 * * * python /home/pi/pigrow2/lampon.py           #turns lamp relay on at 7 am
 0 1 * * * python /home/pi/pigrow2/lampoff.py          #turns lamp relay off at 1 am

 */5 * * * * python /home/pi/Pigrow/scripts/pi_eye_logger.py    #runs pi_eye monitoring script every 5min