Vent: The self-watering planter that nearly killed my basil took me 3 days to debug

I hooked up a drip line with a solenoid valve and a moisture sensor, but the thing kept flooding every 12 hours because the sensor pins were corroding from tap water minerals. Cost me 3 evenings and a trip to the hardware store for vinegar to fix. Anyone else fought a 'smart' gadget that was just stupid about water quality?

2 comments

2 Comments

finley_flores282d ago

...unless you actually want your plants to survive, then maybe the sensor doing its job is the real problem here. I mean, tap water has minerals, everybody knows that. Vinegar fix is fine but honestly you're just treating the symptom. The real issue is you're trying to automate something that takes like two minutes of manual watering a week. I've got a similar setup with distilled water and it's been running for months without a hiccup... so maybe the gear wasn't stupid, you were just feeding it the wrong stuff.

grace_fox31d ago

Vinegar fix is fine, sure, if you enjoy the weekly thrill of playing plant doctor to your own gadgets. @finley_flores28 sounds like you've got it all figured out with your distilled water and perfect ivy, but some of us like a little chaos in our automated watering routines.