Open Garden hardware built around ATtiny84 MCU

Cooking Hacks, the the open hardware division of Libelium, has debuted a new Open Garden hardware platform.

Powered by Atmel’s ATtiny84 microcontroller (MCU), the platform consists of three separate kits equipped with sensors to maintain healthy growth, whether plants are located indoors or outside.

“All kits measure parameters such as temperature, humidity and light; soil moisture is monitored in the Indoor and Outdoor kits; water sensors such as pH, conductivity and temperature are added to the Hydroponics kits,” David Bordonada, Manager of Libelium’s Open Hardware division, explained.

“The Open Garden platform works with various types of actuators that can modify the state of the plants, by irrigating them with droppers or sprinklers or activating lights and oxygen pumps. The sensor nodes periodically send information to an Internet Gateway by using available wireless interfaces such as Wi-Fi, GPRS and 3G.”

According to Bordonada, an open-source web application stores data, allowing users to easily access relevant information from a browser or iPhone/Android app.

The system – compatible with both U.S. (110V) and Europe (220V) power requirements – will be showcased at Maker Faire Bay Area, May 17-18, 2014, at booth 231.

“Open Garden helps you get started with plant projects that range from beginner gardens to fully automated watering systems with grow lights,” added Bordonada.

“Now it’s easy to run your garden with microprocessors and a suite of sensors to monitor your plants and make sure they get optimal care.”

Interested in learning more? You can check out the official Open Garden page here. Readers may also want to browse through some of our previous articles on open source agriculture, including “The Internet of Things, Stalk by Stalk,” “Smart Urban Aquaponics in West Oakland,” “DIY Farming with Atmel and Arduino,” “Open Source Aquaponics with APDuino,” Agricultural Monitoring with Atmel AVR
,” “Arduino-Based Farming in Maine” and “Building a DIY Moisture Monitor.“

Building a localization beacon with Arduino

A team participating in a recent hackathon hosted by Hub Singapore managed to develop an Arduino-powered indoor localization platform in just 24 (CodeXtreme) hours.

Ted, who submitted the project to the official Arduino blog, explained that the Batman-inspired platform converts existing speakers located inside shopping malls into an indoor localization beacon.

“This allows malls to track the location density without adding extensive infrastructure since it uses embedded inaudible sound signatures in music that shops play in the malls,” Ted wrote in an email sent to Arduino. “In short, instead of tracking Joker, we use Arduino (with WiFI Shield & MP3 Shield) and Android Uno (Atmel ATmega328) to track people (customer) inside a mall.”

Ted’s team is now working on fine-tuning the code with the recently launched Atmel-powered (ATmega32u4) Arduino Yún. As previously discussed on Bits & Pieces, the Yún – designed in collaboration with Dog Hunter – is based on Atmel’s popular ATMega32u4 microcontroller (MCU) and also features the Atheros AR9331, an SoC running Linino, a customized version of OpenWRT. The Yún is somewhat unique in the Arduino lineup, as it boasts a lightweight Linux distribution to complement the traditional microcontroller (MCU) interface.