Automated plant watering system in Raspberry Pi - Mini Project: Build & Apply

Automated Plant Watering System

📖 Scenario: You have a small garden with a few plants. You want to build a simple program to help water your plants automatically when the soil is dry.This program will check soil moisture levels and decide if watering is needed.

🎯 Goal: Build a program that reads soil moisture levels for three plants, checks if the moisture is below a set threshold, and prints which plants need watering.

📋 What You'll Learn

Create a dictionary with plant names and their soil moisture levels.

Set a moisture threshold value to decide when to water.

Use a for loop to check each plant's moisture level against the threshold.

Print the names of plants that need watering.

💡 Why This Matters

🌍 Real World

Automated plant watering helps keep plants healthy by watering them only when needed, saving water and effort.

💼 Career

Understanding how to read sensor data and make decisions is useful in IoT (Internet of Things) and embedded systems jobs.

1

Create the soil moisture data

Create a dictionary called soil_moisture with these exact entries: 'Fern': 30, 'Cactus': 70, 'Bonsai': 45 representing the moisture levels of each plant.

Raspberry Pi

# Create the soil_moisture dictionary with given values
# Your code here

Need a hint?

Use curly braces {} to create a dictionary with keys and values.

2

Set the moisture threshold

Create a variable called threshold and set it to 50. This will be the moisture level below which plants need watering.

Raspberry Pi

soil_moisture = {'Fern': 30, 'Cactus': 70, 'Bonsai': 45}
# Set the moisture threshold to 50
# Your code here

Need a hint?

Just assign the number 50 to the variable threshold.

3

Check which plants need watering

Use a for loop with variables plant and moisture to iterate over soil_moisture.items(). Inside the loop, check if moisture is less than threshold and if so, add plant to a list called needs_watering. Create the list before the loop.

Raspberry Pi

soil_moisture = {'Fern': 30, 'Cactus': 70, 'Bonsai': 45}
threshold = 50

# Create an empty list called needs_watering
# Use a for loop to check moisture levels
# Your code here

Need a hint?

Remember to create the list before the loop. Use append() to add plants to the list.

4

Print the plants that need watering

Write a print statement to display the text "Plants that need watering:" followed by the needs_watering list.

Raspberry Pi

soil_moisture = {'Fern': 30, 'Cactus': 70, 'Bonsai': 45}
threshold = 50

needs_watering = []
for plant, moisture in soil_moisture.items():
    if moisture < threshold:
        needs_watering.append(plant)

# Print the plants that need watering
# Your code here

Need a hint?

Use print("Plants that need watering:", needs_watering) to show the result.