This planter is designed to support the growth of vegetables in a hydrophonic system within your own home. The system irrigates and waters the plants in a vertical structure. The plants, e.g. tomatoes, lettuce, peppers or spring onions, are planted in growing pots and hydrophonic granulate.

The control system consists of an esp8266 microcontroller (Wemos D1 mini) with Internet access. The times for switching the LEDs on and off, their brightness (PWM) and the amount of water to be pumped are stored in a database.

The power supply consists of a 12V power supply unit and a step-down converter to 5V for the microcontroller. The 12V are connected to the motor drivers and mosfets of the LED strips.

The LED strips are controlled by the microcontroller via a mosfed breakout board.

A peristaltic pump in each tower draws water from a water reservoir. A non-return valve is installed after the pump in the lower area of the tower so that no water can flow back into the tower above. A Y-piece then divides the hose. This Y piece also reduces the diameter. Both outlets of this part are again subdivided with Y pieces, so that 4 hose ends are left. These hose ends are fitted with hose reducers and small holes so that pressure can build up during pumping and water is pumped from all 4 ends.
See peristaltic pump: https://www.thingiverse.com/thing:6861893

PE pressure pipes are located in the middle of the towers for structural support. The electronic wires run inside the pipes up to the LEDs.
The two lower parts are connected by 2x M3 screws and 2x press-fit sleeves. Both parts fix the remaining part of the tower with a wooden plate.

Sensors for environmental values such as temperature, humidity and pressure can be connected to the microcontroller. An ultrasonic distance meter should be able to measure the water level in the water reservoir.

All parts were printed with PLA, some with support.
You also should check the food compatibility of all parts.

Compare the schematic diagram of the irrigation system. Starting at the bottom:
1: water tank
2: hose with large diameter
3: 1x hose connector, straight
4: silicone hose for the peristaltic pump
5: peristaltic pump
6: non-return valve
7: hose with large diameter, going up the tower within the PlantTower_y parts
8: 1x y hose connector and reducer (big diameter to small diameter)
between 8-9: hose thin diameter
9: 2x y hose connector (small diameter)
10: hose thin diameter
11: 4x hose reducers (printed) these only water the upper 4 plant pots, the remaining pots below are irrigated by the run-off water from the plant pots

The ends of the hoses can be clipped into the PlantTower_y parts. Two different clips for different angles of the following PlantTower_y part.

• PE pressure pipe (outer diameter 20mm, length 1m for 8 plants - depending on how many plant parts are used)

The PE pressure pipe is for structural support and insulation of the electronic lines inside the pipe. On the outside of the pipe, the pumped water drips into the next plants and the water reservoir.

• hose with large diameter, inner diameter 6mm, length in total ~2m
• silicone hose for the peristaltic pumpwith outer diameter 10mm, length ~1m
• hose with thin diameter, inner diameter 4mm, length ~2m

• 12V power supply (with enough amps for stepper & LEDs)
• Step-down converter LM2596: 12V to 5V
• Wemos D1 mini (5V)
• TMC2208 motor driver for stepper pump (12V and 3.3V from Wemos)
• Nema 17 stepper
• IRF520 MOSFET driver board - maybe not the best, not all of these boards worked for the 3.3V of the mini due to the IRFs gate threshold voltage (I guess ;) (12V and 3.3V from Wemos)
• various connectors and wires
• LED strips: I have tried a few strips, my choice at the moment is TOPAI COB LED (IP65, 12V LED Strip 3000K, CRI>90, 4000lm, 480LEDs/M)

I have also added KiCad files of the electronics and the PCB.
Please note that electronics and water do not mix well ;)

The idea behind the programming is to retrieve the current time, call up the desired light-on and light-off times in a database and compare the two.
The database contains the switch-on time, the switch-off time and how much should be poured with the peristaltic pump.

If no database is used, line 269 httpGetRequestTimes(); can be commented out in the code and the times time_on and time_off can be hard-coded in the code.

The Wemos is programmed with the Arduino IDLE, with the Planttower.ino file. I have stored the file planttower_readdatabase.php on a server, which then pulls the information from a mySQL database.

The Wemos also starts a webserver, so you can check and debug your system.

My code is definitely not perfect and could certainly be reworked.