This series of articles aims to show the development of a prototype remote controlled plant waterer, based around NodeMCU hardware.
Why develop this? My partner and I went on a long vacation during a hot summer, our plants were going to get very thirsty and we didn’t have anyone in the area who could help out by watering them.
Why use a NodeMCU? I purchased one some time ago and hadn’t found a use for it yet. Obviously, to be remotely controlled from a different country, I needed something that could connect to wifi. I was curious about the Lua based approach to programming it, particular whether it would turn out to be easier that something like programming an ESP unit with C/Arduino IDE. The NodeMCU I have, from some internet searches, appears to be a NodeMCU v3 LiLon with an ESP-12 on it.
The system can be quite simple, it can just allow e.g. water to be pumped for a certain amount of time on command. It should be controllable over the internet somehow - I already have a website (where you’re reading this!) so setting up a domain, somewhere to host, reverse proxy, etc… is not in the scope of this work.