Pimoroni Grow Kit
A compact Raspberry Pi-powered monitoring system designed to help you take the best possible care of your plants. It will tell you how well they’re hydrated, attract your attention when they need water and, if you want to go a step further, even give them water!
Automatic, systematic, and hydromantic!
The heart of this clever system is the Pimoroni Grow HAT Mini. This Raspberry Pi Mini HAT has a tiny screen to keep an eye on the state of the system, four tactile buttons for navigation, and an onboard piezo buzzer to politely request your attention when your plants need you. There’s also a light sensor, which we’ve used in our code example to stop the alarm from chirping away at night. Pimoroni covered the PCB in little gold flowers because they love you. 🌻
There are three connectors on board to attach the capacitive moisture sensors, so you can measure the moisture levels in three separate pots. Because there are no exposed electrodes, capacitive sensors are a lot less vulnerable to corrosion over time than old-school resistive sensors. They even have a little area so you can label them with plant names (we think ‘Pete’ is a great plant name).
On the back of the Grow HAT Mini, there are another three connectors that will let you turn low-current 5v devices on and off, like pumps, motors, valves, solenoids, or lights. There’s also a set of broken-out I2C connections, perfect for adding on an I2C breakout (like those in the Pimoroni Breakout Garden range). Being able to add on more sensors and interface with extra devices means that it’s possible to level up your budding Grow system to something much more capable and sophisticated – a proper little smart greenhouse for your desktop (or your spaceship, classroom, or apocalyptic bunker!)
Grow Kit Includes:
- Grow HAT Mini
- 3 x Moisture Sensor
- 3 x Moisture Sensor Cable (35cm)
Â
Grow HAT Mini specifications:
- IPS LCD (0.96″ 160×80 pixels) screen
- Four tactile buttons
- Piezo buzzer
- LTR-559 light and proximity sensor (datasheet)
- 3 x JST SH 3P connectors for capacitive moisture sensors
- 3 x Picoblade 2P-compatible connectors with MOSFETs for turning low-current 5v devices on and off.
- Pimoroni breakout-compatible pin header
- Mini HAT-format board
- Fully assembled
- Compatible with all 40-pin header Raspberry Pi models
- Schematic
- Pinout
- Python library
- Dimensions: 66mm x 31mm x 10mm (including header)
Moisture sensor specifications:
- Capacitive moisture sensors with Pulse-Frequency Modulation output.
- Pinout
- Dimensions: 99mm x 10mm x 5mm (including connector)
Software
As well as the usual examples in the Python library to show you how the individual bits of hardware work, we’ve also put together a full plant monitor application so you can start taking care of your plants straight away. We’ve even managed to fit a little UI in there, so you can change your settings directly from the HAT.
Check out our beginner-friendly Getting Started tutorial or get going super fast with the one-line installer:
curl -sSL https://get.pimoroni.com/grow | bash
You might also be interested in taking a look at our auto-watering tutorial.
Notes
- It’s possible to use Grow moisture sensors without the HAT with non-Raspberry Pi devices (like Arduino), as long as they’re capable of monitoring pulses on an IO pin in the range of ~2Hz up to ~30Hz accurately.
