Now that we have a nice enclosure, time to put everything inside.
All of the buildings, all of those cars
were once just a dream
in somebody's head
Mercy Street - Peter Gabriel
All of the buildings, all of those cars
were once just a dream
in somebody's head
Mercy Street - Peter Gabriel
Now that we have a nice enclosure, time to put everything inside.
For the enclosure I wanted something special and not some boring metal or 3D printed box most projects end up in (if at all). For this I found inspiration with DIY Perks on YouTube.
Since it’s a bit hard to get a dedicated wire into my house just to transfer the measurements to where I want to see them, I decided to try out a wireless solution. I ended up using the very inexpensive 433 MHz RF modules for Arduino which seems to work well for me since the signal only has to cover a distance of a few meters. On the other hand, the sender will be located below ground level and there is a metal lid above it as well that can block the signal.
Since an Arduino will be inside the rainwater tank, I will need some electricity there as well. I could exclude using batteries since an Arduino isn’t exactly low power and I needed to power some sensors as well.
I finally moved from an apartment to a house. That also meant, I suddenly had a garden to take care of. The first year was spend with cleaning up the ground. There was plenty of construction material leftovers from the construction company. And a lot of weed. Every evening I cleaned up a small area of the ground with a sieve sifting out stones and weeds up to 30 cm deep. I ended up with at least 600 kilo’s of stones and too many bags of weeds to count.