I’ve been looking into a watering system for an outdoor vegetable garden and found the fluid pump on this site. I was wondering if any was possible to run it through an arduino? The idea is to have the fluid pump run from a rain catch only when water is needed.
What hardware would I need?
Does anyone know what gauge the power is?
Arduino can’t power this pump directly. You will need a transistor (FET) switch to turn it on or off.
You will need a sensor in the rain barrel to make sure it has water.
You will need a sensor in the ground to measure moisture.
You will need a power supply for the pump.
You will need a power supply for the Arduino and sensors.
You will need software to control it all.
Not sure power comes in gauges! Normaly power is in watts. Of course the more watts the thicker the gauge wire you might want…
Thank you for the help. I hate typing on phones something always gets dropped or changed. I meant the gauge wire the pump is. All the article says is heavy gauge wire.
The sensors and software I’m all set with as I am a hardware programmer by trade, but trying to get into PCB side of the house. Can you possibly provide a link to a transistor that would work?
This little kit should work just fine.
https://www.sparkfun.com/products/10256
Unless you are making a dozen of these things, a PCB is not needed. Hand wiring should be more than adequate.
Understood thanks for the quick reply.
Make sure you protect that MOSFET against voltage spikes. The first line of defence is a diode across the motor, but I always like to add protection with a TVS / Tranzorb across the MOSFET too.
The link provided has some build tutorials I was going to follow for the mosfet, but I’m trying to find a small 3 volt pump instead that should do the job to start.
If you are trying to use a lower voltage so that the Arduino can directly power the pump, then you will need a tiny pump. Ouput pins on an Arduino are only capable of a handfull of milliamps of current. A pump that small would not feed water as fast as evaporation.
One possibility of smaller pumps are automotive windshield wiper pumps. You can get them at junk yards for peanuts. They do run on 12V and would need a power supply (small-ish wall wart) and a MOSFET as pointed to before.
No not planning on powering it from the arduino. I’ve always been taught separate and protect. I am a noob at this and do not want to get in over my head. Im just picking a project that I will enjoy and build from there.
fll-freak:
This little kit should work just fine.https://www.sparkfun.com/products/10256
Unless you are making a dozen of these things, a PCB is not needed. Hand wiring should be more than adequate.
I am posting this to this thread because I am using the same pump: https://www.sparkfun.com/products/10455 and am trying to control it with an Arduino via the suggested above mosfet: https://www.sparkfun.com/products/10256. I have also tried a SPST relay. Neither are working. The pump runs for at max a few seconds before the Arduino resets. I imagine it is due to some king of overcurrent on one of the pins, but I dont actually have any idea. I have tried putting a 10uF capacitor in parallel with the pump, but that does not improve the situation. The pump works great when I connect it directly to the power 12V power supply.
I am kind of out of ideas besides taking a completely separate 12V supply and controlling it via a solid state relay. It would truly be the most inelegant solution available. If anybody has any other ideas I would be very appreciative.
Where are you getting the voltage to run the pump? If it is off the Arduino board then that will not work. The little tiny regulator on the Arduino is not sized to handle the current draw of a pump. The regulator overheats and shuts down to save itself.
Although inelegant, the motor will need its own power supply. But what you can do, is regulate this supply down to the voltage needed for the barrel connector on the Arduino (I seem to remember 7 to 12V).