Self-sufficient garden watering system

We are experiencing increasingly extreme weather ranging from no rain at all for weeks to pouring rains with more than 50 liters per square meter per hour. At the same time prices for potable water are rising. As my astronomy hobby has a lot to do with appreciating the beauty of nature, I am also trying to be as conscious for the environment as possible.

A few years ago, I wanted to ensure my backyard always gets enough watering even during extended dry periods but without wasting potable water from the faucet. Hence, I developed a garden watering system, partly with self-developed hardware based on Arduino, partly with ready made equipment, and integrated the whole installation into my home-assistant smart home system.

I installed a water storage system based on 2 IBC containers that collect water from the roof of my house with a storage capacity of 2 cbm (2000 liters). An electric water pump transports the water through a Gardena “micro drip” system I installed in the whole backyard. This installation can be used manually – just turn on the pump once a day for a couple of minutes.

Of course, I wanted to automate this and make use of sensor data and other data sources. Sensor data available:

  • Filling level of water storage (e.g. to avoid running the pump empty)
  • Ambient temperature (e.g. to avoid watering near freezing point)
  • Soil moisture (to decide if watering is necessary at all)
  • Amount of rain in the last 24hrs (no watering necessary if there was enough rain already)

Additional data source: As my weather station is connected to the Weather Underground network, I can do an API call to get a weather forecast specifically to my geo location that is pretty accurate. So my automation also checks the predicted amount of rain for the day, as no watering is necessary when it will rain later that day, anyway (current threshold is 10 liters per square meter).

According to experts, best time of day for watering is a few hours before sunrise to minimize water evaporation. So my automation in set to run at 4 a.m (“bewaesserungszeit”).

At first, I was a bit worried if the only 2cbm of water storage might be sufficient, but after 3 years of running the system in self-sufficient mode I am happy to see: only very rarely the storage ran out of water. With that, I am able to water all my roses and other plants completely self-sufficiently using only collected rain.

In case someone wants to build their own watering system, this is the home-assistant automation I am currently using:

alias: "[Garten] Bewaesserung"
description: "self-sufficient watering system"
trigger:
  - platform: time
    at: input_datetime.bewaesserungszeit
condition:
  - condition: state
    entity_id: switch.bewasserungsautomatik
    state: "on"
  - condition: numeric_state
    entity_id: sensor.regen_in_24h
    below: "1"
  - condition: numeric_state
    entity_id: sensor.aussentemperatur
    above: "7"
  - condition: numeric_state
    entity_id: sensor.ga_wasserstand_filling_level
    above: "5"
  - condition: numeric_state
    entity_id: sensor.bodenfeuchte_vorne
    below: "30"
  - condition: numeric_state
    entity_id: sensor.wupws_precip_1d
    below: "10"
action:
  - service: switch.turn_on
    data: {}
    target:
      entity_id: switch.ga_wasserpumpe
  - delay:
      hours: 0
      minutes: 5
      seconds: 0
      milliseconds: 0
  - service: switch.turn_off
    data: {}
    target:
      entity_id: switch.ga_wasserpumpe
mode: single

Travel plans complete (mostly)

As of today, I think the plans for our trip are complete.

New York

We will start off in New York City, as Olivia always wanted to visit the city that never sleeps. We will visit all the “must sees” and also see a musical and have some fine dining experience.

East coast to west coast

After three days, we will head to Calfornia to meet David with his kids in Los Angeles. But this time, we will take the adventurous route: Instead of just flying from NYC to LAX, we will take the train! This way, we can even incorporate some more sights into our itinerary:

  • Taking the Train 63 “Maple Leaf”, we will see the beautiful Hudson River Valley and have a half day “stop-over” in Niagara Falls
  • Shortly after midnight, we will board Train 49 “Lake Shore Limited” in Buffalo Depew Station heading to Chicago, IL along the great lakes. We will have 4.5hrs of time in Chicago, so hopefully we will be able to stroll through downtown before we embark
  • Train 3 “Southwest Chief” heading to Los Angeles. We will have the luxury of a Roomette in the train, so we can “live” and sleep during this 3 day train ride from east coast to west coast.

Amtrak has a cool feature on their website where you can track all of their trains while en route.

Los Angeles

We will stay in Los Angeles for four days meeting David and his kids, and of course, when travelling with kids we HAVE to go to Disneyland. We then will head back to David’s in Monterey and stay there for a couple of days.

Roadtrip through the West

As soon as we pick up our rental car from SFO, we will immediately start our road trip and even though I was in the U.S. travelling many times, this will be by far the longest and most exciting trip through the western United States. The tour will bring us to:

  • Kings Canyon & Sequoia National Park
  • Three Rivers, CA
  • Lake Isabella
  • Lone Pine
  • Death Valley NP
  • Las Vegas
  • Hoover Dam
  • Grand Canyon NP
  • Marble Canyon
  • Page, AZ
  • Antelope Canyon(s)
  • Horseshoe Bend
  • Monument Valley (if we can squeeze it in)
  • Vermillion Cliffs / The Wave (only if we win the day lottery)
  • St. George, UT (Iceberg is waiting for us)
  • Zion NP
  • Bryce Canyon NP
  • Grand Staircase Escalante
  • Capitol Reef NP
  • Moab, UT
  • Arches NP
  • Canyonlands NP
  • Salt Lake City, UT
  • Yellowstone NP
  • Lake Tahoe
  • Mono Lake
  • Bodie Ghost Town
  • Lee Vining
  • Yosemite NP
  • San Francisco

What a list of sights – I know this might suffice for several trips, but this year we have the time for it and I tried to plan our itinerary in a way that doesn’t require me driving long distances every day. So we will mostly stop for a couple of days in one location to have enough time to hike and take photos.

Can’t wait to start travelling!

New Photo Gear

I did it – again!
Because this year’s trip to the U.S. will be very special for us, I decided to upgrade my Photo gear. And I did this LAST NIGHT (2 and a half days before departure)! So this morning, I ordered the “holy trinity” of Nikon Z Nikkor Lenses:

  • Nikon Nikkor Z 14-24mm 1:2.8 S
  • Nikon Nikkor Z 24-70mm 1:2.8 S
  • Nikon Nikkor Z 70-200mm 1:2.8 S

And of course, the awesome Nikon Z9. With this new gear, I hope to capture the best moments and sights during our trip. Speaking of hope: Hopefully everything gets delivered by tomorrow as advertised, so I can exchange my equipment in my photo backpak just a day before departure 🙂

Of course, as I am always extremely careful with my equipment, I also ordered UV filters for all the lenses to protect the front glass and circular polarizer filters for all lenses:

LensUV FilterCPL Filter
Nikon Z 14-24K&F Concept Nano X-Series UV 112mmK&F Concept Nano X-Series CPL 112mm
Nikon Z 24-70K&F Concept Nano X-Series UV 82mmK&F Concept Nano X-Series CPL 82mm
Nikon Z 70-200K&F Concept Nano X-Series UV 77mmK&F Concept Nano X-Series CPL 77mm
Note: I added Amazon Affiliate links so when you click a link and buy the product from Amazon, I will receive a small commission which hopefully will help me to cover the cost for hosting this blog. You will pay the same price on Amazon no matter if you click the link here or seach on Amazon yourself.

I am already eager to learn how these K&F Filters will perform during our travels.

To make the list of Camera gear complete, these things will also go into my photo backpack:

GearUsage
Nikon Z9To me, THE ultimate mirrorless camera to date
Tamron SP 150-600mm G2As there is no Nikon Z alternative currently available, I stick with this lens, together with the FTZ II
B+W UV-Haze Filter 95mmUV & Protective Filter for the Tamron
Nikon FTZ IIWill be permanently attached to the Tamron Tele Zoom
Silicone Lens ShadesTo avoid reflections and glare when imaging through windows
Rollei Compact Traveler No 1 Carbon TripodTripod with ballhead at less than 1kg of weight but 8kg of payload, Arca Swiss compatible mounting plate
Note: I added Amazon Affiliate links so when you click a link and buy the product from Amazon, I will receive a small commission which hopefully will help me to cover the cost for hosting this blog. You will pay the same price on Amazon no matter if you click the link here or seach on Amazon yourself.

I know, this will be some heavy-lifting while hiking through the wilderness, but since I hiked down and up again Grand Canyon with 16+kg of photo gear, I am accustomed to this kind of travel 🙂

Travel equipment

Travelling always meant to me, I need technical stuff, as my camera was and will be always with me. And as I am an enthusiast for high quality products, this meant quite some heavy gear based on my Nikon camera equipment.

Currently, I am using a Nikon D850 and in the transition process towards the Z(9) system. Main reason for the “slow” transition is: I have a lot of (heavy) glass, i.e. most of the /f2.8 Nikkor Lenses and I am reluctant to buy all these lenses for the Z system, again. Nikon’s F to Z adapter “FTZ II” is here to help – the version II is smaller than the first version as it omits the Tripod terminal which prevented the old adapter to be used with the Z9.

I also like to travel prepared and with proper equipment to be able to backup my storage media. But while in ancient ages a mobile backup device like a Jobo Giga Vu Pro was completely sufficient, today’s memory cards may even be bigger than the SSD of a laptop – so new backup media is required.

For our U.S. trip, I am planning to pack these items into my “Techniktüte”:

ItemPurposeNotes
ASUS Zenbook Space EditionNotebookAs a space nerd, I HAD to have the Space Edition 🙂
UGREEN Nexode 200W Desktop ChargerMains Power SupplyReplacing all other PSUs as it can power 6 devices at once
ESSAGER Thunderbolt3 Dock with NVMe SlotUSB Hub, SD Card Reader & SSD BackupFast reader, has SD Card and NVMe Slot for Memory Card Backups to SSD
Crucial P3 4TB NVMeBackup MediaProbably not the fastest for desktop use but good price / performance for mobile backup
SanDisk CFexpress Card ReaderReader for D850 CFx mediaBackup of CFexpress Cards
INIU Power Bank 20000 mAhMobile powerSmall but powerful, can fast charge several devices at once
Power Bank 20000 mAhMobile power 2As we are travelling together, my daugther needs mobile juice, too
Nikon MH-25aCharger for EN-EL15 batteries Nikon D850
Nikon EN-EL15Backup Batteries Nikon D850
Transcend CFexpress 512GBPrimary memory card for D850Used in main Card Slot in D850
Sabrent SDXC 512GBIn-Camera Backup2nd Card Slot in D850
Nikon MH-32Charger for EN-EL25 batteriesMy daughter’s Nikon Z fc
EN-EL25 BatteriesBackup BatteriesNikon Z fc
Samsung EVO Select 512 GB SDXCMemory CardNikon Z fc
Bodyguard Colt Camera BagNikon Z fc
GoPro Hero 10Action CamFor extreme purposes where we don’t want to risk our main cameras (like whitewater rafting)
DuraPRO Batteries & Chargerextra Power for GoPro
NEEWER 50 in 1 GoPro Accessory KitGoPro Accessories kitGoPro goes anywhere 😉
DigiPower Re-Fuel Battery PackLonger juice for GoProUseful for timelapses while on the road
Nikon FTZ IIUse Nikon F lenses on Z camerasI can use my heavy F glass on a Z camera, the II version has no Tripod port so it can be used with the Nikon Z9
Note: I added Amazon Affiliate links so when you click a link and buy the product from Amazon, I will receive a small commission which hopefully will help me to cover the cost for hosting this blog. You will pay the same price on Amazon no matter if you click the link here or seach on Amazon yourself.

Smarthome 2023

For several years now, I constantly worked on improving my home automation. It started all quite simple with some disconnected devices but over the years it grew to quite some complex system. I good friend of mine always refers to as “coming back to the future” when visting me in my house.

In 2019, I attended the “Homematic User Forum” in Kassel, Germany for the first time. And to my surprise, after sending my registration (including a short abstract of what I implemented in my house) I was asked to give a short presentation, which I gladly did. Since then, I continuously updated my presentation slides whenever something new happend that was worth mentioning.

So if you want to get a glimpse of my smarthome history, have a look at this Google Presentation.

Rooftop Observatory

In 2014, I built an astronomical observatory on the top of my house. In a previous blog, I wrote a lot about the development and creation of the obsevatory but due to unfortunate events and despite all backups, these posts were unrecoverably lost. Perhaps I will be able to retrieve them in the future, or write similar new posts but for the time being, I want to share some pictures of the observatory.

4th of July 2023!

It’s the 4th of July 2023 – time to start preparing for our once-in-a-lifetime father and daughter trip through the U.S.!
This year, we are planning to travel the U.S. from east to west and then a major roadtrip to major national parks and other great sights. Perhaps we will find some time to write about our adventures in the Travel blog.

Why once in a lifetime?

  • After more than 30 years of working day in and day out, I have the opportunity to have a vacation for six weeks in a row, for the first time in my life.
  • My daughter is currently very interested in the U.S., she even considers the possibility to go to high school for a year in the U.S.
  • She is now old enough to speak and understand English on a daily basis and also old enough to “survive” my kind of travelling with lots of location changes, long distance drives and wilderness hiking.

So what’s the plan?

  • We want to check off some things from our bucket list, predominantly with these items:
    • Visit New York City
    • Travel by train for a part of our trip
    • Visit David with his family and finally get to know his youngest son
    • Go to Disneyland
    • Yellowstone Nationalpark is a must

And what’s our time frame?

  • We will be travelling during the whole summer school vacation period in Baden-Württemberg, so we will lift off from FRA on July, 28th and touch down again on Sept, 9th.

I wouldn’t be myself if I didn’t prepare a huge online table detailling our itinerary, things to do, where to stay and so on. Currently I am working on it on a daily basis, adding hotels, attractions and prices to refine our trip.

At the same time I am re-evaluating what items to take with us – especially in the area of technical equipment. For years, I always relied on my “Techniktüte” – a Kodak branded plastic bag with all kinds of cables, power supplies, adapter etc necessary while on the road. But due to Covid and technical development I just had to realise: The content of this bag is totally outdated – I need new stuff! … perhaps a good idea to write a separate post on the new equipment we want to travel with.

“Well known Techniktüte” 🙂