This Homemade Aquaponic Irrigation System Is Powered by a Raspberry Pi

Your garden needs love and attention to flourish. So why not automate that love with the help of a Raspberry Pi? Maker Richard Sears did just that with an invention aptly dubbed GardenPi. It's a fully automated hydroponic/aquaponic control system made to help control and monitor your garden with ease. 

We can't go forward without recognizing how much work Sears invested into this project. It has tools to control sprinkler valves, sensors to detect water levels from his fish aquariums and an application to help manage water flow between his fish and garden plots.

Sears and his family keep aquariums. Up until now, they had to carry buckets of water from the aquariums to the garden by hand. The new GardenPi system takes filtered water from the aquariums and puts it into a reservoir tank. Ultrasonic sensors detect the water levels in the tank, and then GardenPi automatically pumps the water from the tank into the garden when it's time.

The project relies on a 4GB Raspberry Pi 4 model, but Sears insisted that older editions should work just as well. Although, the Pi 4 provides a bit of a buffer with the expanded RAM. 

Sears also fitted his Pi 4 with a touchscreen interface and custom bezel.

If you want to explore the details of this project, check out the full write-up from Sears on Hackster. You can also follow him on Reddit for future updates.