Week 1 Update

So I figured it be easiest to write these things after a weekend of working on this project. Mainly because I will be doing most of the work on the weekend and I can write these with the project fresh on my mind.

Progress since my last post:

I have acquired any more hardware, but after doing some software coding and research, I have found a flaw in code. According to the manufacturer of the processor onboard the Arduino, the processor's internal hard drive(only 1kb available) is reliable to only 100,000 erase/write cycles. I was planning on using this storage to keep track of the time, writing to it every minute. This means that the address I would be writing the data to could become unreliable after approximately 70 days. Therefore, I have been researching ways to fix this problem. I am thinking that I can monitor the power source, and when it goes off, then write the time to the hard drive. Hopefully this can be done using the power left in the capacitors onboard the Arduino. If not, I may have to get a larger capacitor to power the board until the writes can be performed.

Enough of the pitfalls, back to the progress. I have finished the code to set up the time, initialize the day/night cycle, and continue the day/night cycle after the initial cycle. I have also started coding the control of the solenoid for the water sprayer. While coding this control structure, I have had to keep in mind that later in the project, I will be using a sensor as input to this control, but for now the control is a simple interval, every 2 hours. This means that every 2 hours, the solenoid will fire, allowing water to flow through the spray nozzles. Later, when I have a hygrometer, if the sensor falls below a set value, only then will the solenoid fire.

That is the update this week. I hope everyone has a good week. Sorry, no pictures on this one as all I've done is coding.