On the internet nobody knows you're a duck.

I’m looking at irrigating the garden and automating the process. I saw something about home-assistant.io/ online but would love any advice you might have. I’d like to automate and chart my watering as well as integrate moisture monitors and a weather monitoring system.

Seriously though, if you're looking into stuff like this, you should go asking questions around the Marijuana cultivation community. There's actually been a massive upsurge in the last 5-7 years of projects using off the shelf components like Raspberry Pi's to essentially automate their cannabis grows. Some of them are related to home assistant, some are standalone.

Each time I read about it I keep hoping that others will take that work and start extending it to other types of plants. Cannabis is great and all, but you can't really eat it for sustenance, you know?

reddit.com/r/raspberry_pi/comm…

github.com/yieldbuddy

Just some quick examples.

Also, you might try the /c/selfhosted community for information on things like home assistant and getting it up and running.

Though, be warned, home automation of this type can quickly end up increasing your electricity usage by a lot.

I have an electric bike and an old 1996 honda crv. I’d like to switch to an electric vehicle, something like a Pickman 4x4 or another small farm vehicle, as I only need to get to the village bus stop, neighbouring farms, and the occasional trip into town via back roads.

As for the old Honda CRV, if you know anyone that speaks Spanish/Portuguese or have an ability to translate either easily, South America has a whole history in the last ten years of converting old cars into EVs. I'd start looking for forums for those countries and poking around for conversion kits for your model.

restofworld.org/2024/electric-…

Fucking awesome! Thanks for your story!

Question: I want to live the same as you, or at least similar.

How much of your time do you spend for gathering food (farming, hunting), repairing, building, and other stuff?

Do you have a (company) job too?

How high are the costs of living for you compared to normal citizens?

Regarding plant automation stuff: maybe take a look at my post and consider !hydroponics@slrpnk.net.
I made a post there introducing my semi-automated setup.

photon.slrpnk.net/post/1427431…

If you are using soil, you can still learn something from it.

But as one other commentator mentioned, nobody else excels more in knowledge and automation than either stoners, or hydro guys, or in my case both ;)

I think setting up Home Assistant and full automation isn't necessary.
I actually already have HA installed on my home server, but never planned using it for my balcony gardening, because hydro (and some soil pots with tray) is just set and forget, except maybe checking the EC and pH once a week or so.

The soil mainly dries up when full sun is blasting on it, and over night it stays moist.
Maybe you can use companion plants, moss or mulch, that reduces the surface evaporation A LOT.

Just having a few micro drippers, plugged into a rain collection system, and powered by a small cheap solar panel and USB pump is enough I believe.

By having constant small drips, you can save a lot of water! Even in open soil, not only pots!

If you want something commercial, there's a pre-made microdrip system made from Gardena, but I don't know if that's available for you, and I find it a bit too expensive for my taste.
gardena.com/int/products/water…
And it's mainly made for tap water...

Maybe even simpler would be the usage of a so called Olla, which is a teracotta pot that slowly releases water and was used for thousands of years in central America.