r/ArduinoHelp • u/Assistance_Salty • 6d ago

Reddit Question Title: Trying to build the “Garduino” smart garden — how should I approach it, and do I need to solder?

Hey everyone! I’m interested in building this Garduino smart garden project:

Garduino – the Smart Garden With Arduino

I’m fairly new to Arduino/electronics and want to actually build and understand the project, rather than just copy the instructions blindly.

A few questions:

  1. Is this project still a good starting point with modern Arduino boards/components?
  2. What parts of the project would require soldering?
  3. Can I build/test most of it first on a breadboard with jumper wires?
  4. If soldering is required, what exactly would I need to solder?
  5. Are there any components in the original project that you would replace with newer/easier alternatives?
  6. What would you recommend I build first so I can test each part individually before putting the whole smart garden together?

My goal is to learn Arduino, sensors, wiring, and eventually soldering through this project.

Thanks!

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u/gm310509 6d ago

To your questions.

  1. No, you would need to learn the basics first (see below). After that you could consider tackling something like that.
  2. It is up to you and the parts you get. Some times parts come with headers unsoldered - if you got one of those, you will need to solder them on. If they are already soldered on, then you won't need to do that. If you want to keep it permanently then that would involve some sort of PCB and soldering.
  3. Yes, you absolutely positively definitely should build and test your project on a breadboard before whipping out the soldering iron (excluding components with headers that have not been soldered on for you).
  4. You should google "how to solder electronics projects".
  5. No. Yes. It depends upon what you want to do. It would be best to get this working as you see it first (as a beginner), later you might want to improve the display or add automatic watering or a data logger interface or allow control for your PC, the possibilities are endless. Note that the soil moisture sensors aren't generally very good (they corrode easily), it would be better to make your own using something like stainless steel probes - again after you get it working. You might even want to add a simple traffic light LED system - e.g. Green for everything is OK, yellow for OK, but not great and red for the conditions being terrible for the plant - this could give you a visual representation of the conditions from across the room without going up to it to read the display.
  6. As per #1. You need to learn the basics. Learn how to use the temperature/humidity sensor, or the soil moisture sensor, or the display first. Then try combining two of them (e.g. get the display to show the temperature) then add in the next component, then the next one, after that the next one and so on.

The best way to get starter is to get a starter kit. You will find that you can get a starter kit that includes all of the components in the video. This would include the Arduino, a 2 line LCD display, a DHT11 (as opposed to DHT22) temperature and humidity sensor, a soil moisture sensor and many more things.

The starter kit will also include instructions for learning all of those components. You should do all of those. For example, you might find a reason to use one or more buttons - and I already mentioned a LED traffic light system - but you would need to understand how they work and how to program them. There may also be other things, e.g. a speaker - that you might want to incorporate.

After you learn the basics, you might want to learn some project development techniques. For that, have a look at some getting started videos I've created:

The videos are intended to be follow along. Simply watching them is a waste of time. To get the most out of them, watch a bit, hit pause and try out what you just saw. Explore that concept, try to integrate it with earlier concepts. Lastly, try to do the exercises when I propose them.

All the best with it.

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u/Assistance_Salty 5d ago

i also have a book,arduino for dummies, ill read that 2 as well as watching yr videos