Upgrade the DIY Self Watering Pot With WiFi Into a DIY Motion Detect Sentry Alarm Planter

In this article we will show you how to upgrade your DIY Self Watering Pot with WiFi into a DIY Self Watering Pot with WiFi and Motion Detect Sentry Alarm.

If you haven’t read the article on how to build a DIY Self Watering Pot With WiFi, you can find that article here.

• waterproof motion detector
• digital buzzer alarm
• drill

The first thing you will want to do is disconnect the WiFi board from the planter. Just simply and carefully unplug all the wirings from the board and remove the board from the enclosure.

Now we will show you how to connect a waterproof motion detector and digital buzzer alarm to the board. To attach the motion detector and digital buzzer alarms to the Adosia board, use the boards’ Digital IO Channel 1 and Digital IO Channel 2 (pictured above). The channels are interchangeable, so you can use either connector, just remember which channel you use as you will need to know this when you login to Adosia to setup your control system.

The two holes at the bottom of the upper IO board are used to mount peripheral components. We will use one of them to mount our digital buzzer alarm.

The first thing you need to do to attach the buzzer alarm, is to disconnect the Adosia WiFi board from the baseboard. The Adosia SPACE IO board pulls out of the WiFi control baseboard easily, so you can work on attaching sensors to the IO board without damaging the WiFi baseboard.

To mount the buzzer onto the IO board just simply screw the buzzer onto the board using the PBC mounts that came with the kit.

Once the buzzer is attached, we attach the wire connectors to the buzzer alarm and route it to Digital IO Channel 2 on our Adosia IO board.

After plugging in the buzzer alarm, you can now plug the WiFi board back onto the baseboard controller (look while plugging in to make sure the pins line up on both sides).

Now we can insert our Adosia board back into our enclosure assembly and reattach the wires.

Plug the board back up that way it was when it was just a WiFi self watering pot. The level sensor switch (yellow wires) plugs into the top left connector. The water pump (red/black wires) plugs into the center-left connector, and the analog soil moisture sensor (black/red/blue wires) plug into the top right connector.

Now we drill another 3/8" hole into the upper soil container of our self watering pot. This is where we will hide the motion detector.

Feed the motion detector wires through the hole with the soil moisture sensor and tubing, as pictured above. Now insert the motion detector through the 3/8" hole we just drilled and bury the connector wire in the bark mulch to conceal it.

To connect the motion detector to the Adosia board, plug it into the Digital IO Channel 1. Make sure the green wire is on the left and the black wire is on the right.

Pictured above is the motion detector placed in the 3/8" hole. Make sure it is inserted correctly and that the tip of the detector is through the hole for it to work correctly.

To make the motion detector wires barely noticeable, move some bark around to hide the wires even better.

Login to Adosia - pictured above is the WiFi control profile setup for the water pump. We set it to operate on a trigger and to run for 20 seconds when it gets triggered.

This is the water level sensor switch. We set it up to protect our pump and to alert us when the water reservoir is empty.

This is the motion detect setup. We set up the buzzer alarm to trigger Digital IO Channel 2 (image not shown), which is configured to be a General Digital Output with mode "triggers HIGH". Once done configuring your profile, save it and assign it to your device.

The data on the left is the data from the first few hours our new planter is operating. It shows the number of motion detect triggers.

The data on the right shows how long the buzzer alarm was active relevant to the number of motion detect triggers.

This is the completed DIY WiFi Sentry Pot with Motion-Activated Alarm, we have it growing a Bloodgood Japanese Maple in the kitchen by the back door, and we will activate alert once we head out for vacation.