Plant Waterer

  • This is a device that I built in October 2002. During this time I was working for a company that required to me travel for extended periods of time, and it was inconvenient to ask friends to water my plants for me. I built this device to automatically water the plants during my trips.

    Plant Waterer

    Plant Waterer

    The Plant Waterer is based on a windshield washer pump assembly that I removed from a donor Hyundai car at a local junkyard. I mounted the assembly on a wooden base and connected it to a valve system that I built from aquarium parts. Each of the valves allows the amount of water to be metered for each plant.

    On the back of the wooden base is a 12VDC transformer that powers the pump. This transformer is connected to an X-10 appliance module. At first I used an X-10 timer to turn the machine on and off daily. Later I built my own X-10 interface for my Commodore 64 and wrote a scheduling program for it.

    The Hyundai tank holds well over one gallon and is capable of supporting several small plants for long periods of time, perhaps a month or more. Since my two large plants require quite a bit of water, the machine typically can run for about two weeks of daily watering before needing to be refilled.