Getting Started with This ‘Liv Love’ Thing
Okay, so let me tell you about this little project I got going, this ‘liv love’ idea. It really started ’cause I was just tired. Tired of seeing my poor plants looking all sad and droopy because I’d forget to water ’em. You know how it is, life gets busy. I figured, there’s gotta be a better way, right? Something simple.
So, I decided I’d try and build a little automatic watering thing. Nothing fancy, just something to keep the green guys happy. First step, naturally, was figuring out what bits I needed. Did a bit of poking around online, looking at what other folks had done. Ended up ordering:
- A tiny water pump, the kind you use for fish tanks, maybe?
- Some thin plastic tubing, like for aquariums.
- A little sensor thingy to check if the soil was dry.
- And this small computer board, like a tiny brain, to control everything.
- Oh, and a cheap plastic box to maybe stuff it all into.
Putting It All Together (The Messy Part)
Got all the bits delivered. Spread them out on the kitchen table. Looked simple enough on the websites, but man, putting it together was fiddly. The tubing didn’t quite want to stay on the pump nozzle. Had to use some small clips I found in the garage. Then connecting the wires to that little brain box – the instructions were okay, but my fingers felt like sausages trying to push those tiny wires into the right spots. Dropped the screws about five times.
Seriously, patience was key here. Took me pretty much a whole Saturday afternoon just getting the physical parts hooked up. Pump in a bucket of water, tube running to the plant pot, sensor stuck in the dirt, everything wired back to the control box. It looked like a bit of a science experiment gone wrong, wires everywhere.
Testing, Failing, Trying Again
Alright, moment of truth. Plugged it in. The little brain box lit up. Good sign. Waited. The soil was dry, I checked. The sensor was supposed to tell the brain box, which then tells the pump… nothing happened. Just silence. Great.
Spent the next hour checking connections. Pulled wires out, pushed them back in. Turns out I’d plugged the sensor wire into the wrong hole on the brain box. Swapped it over. Tried again. This time, the pump whirred to life! Success! But then… way too much water came out. Nearly flooded the poor plant. Okay, progress, but messy progress.
Had to figure out how to tell the brain box how long to run the pump. More fiddling. This involved connecting the brain box to my old laptop and messing with some simple code stuff someone shared online. Took a lot of trial and error. Run it, too much water. Adjust. Run it, not enough water. Adjust again. Felt like I was training a stubborn puppy.
Finally, Sweet Success!
After maybe the tenth try, I got it. The sensor read the dry soil, the pump kicked on for just like, five seconds, delivered a nice little drink to the plant, then shut off. Perfect. Stuck the sensor in another plant, waited a day, checked it – it worked again! Felt pretty damn good, I gotta say. Tidied up the wires best I could, tucked the brain box and pump into that plastic container.
So now, ‘Liv’ – yeah, I started calling the system Liv – takes care of watering one or two plants for me. It’s not gonna win any design awards, looks a bit DIY, which it is. But it works. The plants look happier, and that’s one less thing I gotta stress about remembering every single day. This whole ‘liv love’ practice turned out alright. Bit of a headache setting up, sure, but worth it in the end.
