MakerSpace Manage your greenhouse with a Raspberry Pi Pico W Sheltered Growth

You can safely assign some greenhouse tasks to a Raspberry Pi Pico W, such as controlling ventilation, automating a heater, and opening and closing windows.

- Swen Hopfe

When implementing my greenhouse control system, I didn't have to start completely from scratch. An older control system already existed with which I had a little experience. Building on this established setup, I decided to use power windows for the hinged skylights (Figure 1) and a fan to circulate the air in the greenhouse. Also, when nighttime temperatures dropped in the spring and fall, I wanted a heater to switch on automatically. In contrast, crops needed protection against excessive heat in summer.

An intelligent control system would also be nice to reference the outside temperature, allowing it to close the windows in time for cool evenings and build up a heat reserve for young crops during the night. At the same time, a reliable clock was essential to adapt to the lighting conditions of different seasons.

All functions should be remotely accessible, with the option to intervene over the web if thresholds were exceeded. Another requirement was an activity log to collect messages from ongoing operations for remote viewing without always having to check the display in the greenhouse. To implement all of this, I used a Raspberry Pi Pico W. In addition to the essential peripheral devices, it now provides the entire logic and a web server.

Getting Started

Unlike the single-board computers from the Raspberry Pi family, the Pico requires very little preparation. I used the WiFi version because the controller could not be managed remotely without a connection to the home WiFi network. I also needed a USB port for the programming. In the development phase, you need to feed the commands externally from the special Python Thonny integrated development environment (IDE) to the controller, and to finish the job, you need to transfer your code to the module permanently.