Pick the Perfect Plant: Battery-Powered Sun Tracking #Light #AdafruitLearningSystem @Adafruit
Article excerpt
Ever wonder if that empty corner of your yard is actually fit for sun-loving tomatoes or better off with shade-tolerant hostas? Instead of playing the gardening guessing game, this Learn guide walks you through building a battery-powered data logger designed to track the amount of sun a certain part of your garden gets on an […]
Ever wonder if that empty corner of your yard is actually fit for sun-loving tomatoes or better off with shade-tolerant hostas? Instead of playing the gardening guessing game, this Learn guide walks you through building a battery-powered data logger designed to track the amount of sun a certain part of your garden gets on an average day. Built around the Adafruit ESP32-S2 Feather, the build uses a VEML7700 Lux sensor connected via plug-and-play STEMMA QT cables. By utilizing CircuitPython’s deep sleep capabilities, the microcontroller wakes up just long enough to capture ambient light levels and transmit them over Wi-Fi to a continuous Adafruit IO dashboard before instantly shutting down. This extends a standard LiPo battery pack’s lifespan from mere hours to several weeks of uninterrupted data collection.
The real magic happens once the data is gathered. Beyond charting beautiful, real-time light graphs on Adafruit IO, the guide details how to export your historical sunlight levels into a simple CSV format. From there, you can feed your raw lux data alongside your local USDA Hardiness Zone into an AI model to serve as a custom “virtual master gardener.” The AI analyzes peak sun hours and light intensity to deliver a precise, tailored list of perennials or vegetables guaranteed to thrive in that exact patch of dirt.
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