Automatic Greenhouse Watering Part 2 - It Works! And Then I Broke It!
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- Опубліковано 1 жов 2024
- The second instalment in my bumbling journey to set up a low-budget automatic watering system for my greenhouse. This time, with some success, but also with added failure!
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I got some tiny 12V pond fountain pumps from eBay, and a 12V on/off timer switch. In the winter I use the timer switch to turn lights on and off, and in Summer it is used to turn on the pump for a set time each day to water our potted plants. Total cost was about £15, although you do need a 12 volt battery to run it too, I happened to have an old one to hand. Quite simple to do, the most complex part was working out how the timer switch was programmed!
-Actually, I'd forget the on/off timer and just make an overflow pipe that leads back down to the lower water tank.-
Ah, I see, he isn't using any form of timing after the header tank.
I found one locally that has a brushless DC motor that doesn't need a battery (though you could always toss in a SLA battery and diode in line with it).
“Some local Urchin” made me laugh and also took me back to my plant watering, dog walking, cat feeding Urchin days ❤
It made me laugh too. Always a risk with local Urchins nowadays, for example, that bottle of cider could've been his. ha ha.
My grandad used to call me and my sister urchins and I had forgotten about it, him saying that brought back a really nice memory for me and made me giggle ❤️
This episode is yet another illustration of why we are so inordinately fond of Atomic Shrimp. Good job, Mike.
I suspect you could cobble together a little 12V DC aquarium pump, a separate programmable 12V timer, and a car battery or other 12V battery. There is also a fair amount of inexpensive 12V solar equipment that you could use to top off the battery as well, but a car battery would likely last for a while. These sorts of all-in-one solutions tend to me to be much less hardy and less repairable than something with discrete components. It would certainly be more expensive, which might defeat the purpose of this project, but it wouldn't be nearly as DIY as a Raspberry Pi or Arduino-based solution.
Using Tasmota on an ESP32 would largely avoid DIYing the scheduling/coding side.
if its going to be exposed to the elements you'd want a pond one not aquarium
just buy a 3v relay, connect to new pump
@@rama3njoy 5v reed relay would be a good shout
@@TomOConnor-BlobOpera single 18650 max 4.2v, and i think that circuit without step-up
“You get what you pay for” & “Buy cheap, buy twice” are phrases that instantly spring to mind!
Even if something costs 1 cent/penny/yen, it should still do what it's advertised to do.
in all fairness, the electronics part seems fine. The hoses and attachments are cheap.
Yes, the classic "Sam Vimes 'Boots' theory of socioeconomic unfairness"
@@markozagar The reason that the rich were so rich, Vimes reasoned, was because they managed to spend less money. Take boots, for example. ... A man who could afford fifty dollars had a pair of boots that'd still be keeping his feet dry in ten years' time, while a poor man who could only afford cheap boots would have spent a hundred dollars on boots in the same time and would still have wet feet.
@@markozagar I still to this day think of this before buying work boots
Amazing well done 👏 never been so invested in a watering system 😂🥰
Shrimp, this type of video reminds me of being in the garage with my dad while he worked on stuff and would talk through it. He was a Boeing engineer and very mechanically inclined. Thanks for the nice memories.
Touching!
How appropriate! I am watching this on Fathers Day here in the US. And I am also reminded of my dad and his projects. Wonderful memories!
@@ununuh Sweet
It always makes me smile when you upload! Its nice to see you doing what you want to do.
Cheers from America! In the Aquarium hobby world we use float switches. It works much like the floaty thing in the water closet above a toilet bowl. This could be done either passive/siphon style or hooked up to an electric pump as you have done. I love the fact you chose not to throw all this stuff away but made the best of it! If you were a Yankee we would call this Yankee Ingenuity. Great vid as always !!
Hi Mike,
The battery probably can run just fine without continuous charging. Fundamentally, all the pump is doing is moving 4 litres of water from one elevation to another - it's very simple to calculate how much energy this would take. We know the volume of water used is about 4 L and I'll say the height change is about 2 metres.
The work done by the pump is given by the change in pressure multiplied with the volume of water moved. Since the pump is only fighting gravity (I'll neglect any pump inefficiencies for now), the change in pressure is given by water density * acceleration due to gravity * height change, so 1000 kg/m^3 * 9.8 m/s^2 * 2m, giving a pressure difference of 19,600 Pa. Thus, 19600 Pa * 0.004 m^3 = 78 J of work is done.
The capacity of an 18650 battery varies, but according to a website called Fogstar, they have a nominal voltage of 3.6 V and capacity between 1800 and 3600 mAh. This gives a total energy capacity of 3.6 V * (1.8 * 3600 As) = 23,000 J. That's a lifetime of 297 days!
Obviously, the pump isn't perfectly efficient, but it's unlikely to be so inefficient that it would use up the battery's capacity in a few days.
All of this being said, there's nothing wrong with your setup with the solar panel - peace of mind is just as important as any other consideration here.
Always love these math comments
"very simple" to calculate indeed 😂
Just felt the need to say that the result can be reached in a single step without involving pressure.
The final potential energy of the water is simply m*g*h= 4kg*9.8m/(sec^2)*2m=78.4J and that's the final result since it all was due to the work of the pump.
You might need to just ask a neighbour to water your garden for you. That or maybe the universe is telling you not to go on holiday
Great. Now I want to get utterly sozzled on 2.5 litres of cheap cider through a vimto spout 😂
Excellent video as always Mr Shrimp!
the internet is slowly becoming unusable thanks to sellers like this, peddling junk thats not fit for purpose. you have to be so careful
I don't think this is a new issue. As seen on TV products have done this for decades. The difference is with those, you buy one piece of garbage for $200, instead of 20 for $10.
@@kenningtonrund282 True enough, i just think its becoming prolific to the point where finding legitimate products for niche use cases is almost impossible unless you're in the know and know what brand or shop sells the legit product.
Parkside in lidl has an automatic plant watering thingy! For £30 If you're still looking for one. I've got one and it seems pretty good
I believe this device from Parkside simply has a soilenoid inside that gets opened, so it needs to be connected to a pressurized water line. He mentioned at 15:17 that he has neither mains power, nor an actual water line at the greenhouse where he tries to water.
@@graealex just need to hang a bag of water at the top of the greenhouse? Gravitational pressure would suffice
@@growtocycle6992 Depending on the greenhouse, he might not have a place to put 30 Liters or so of water on it, or rather, it might not handle the weight of it.
I wonder if Big Clive would be interested in doing a semi collaberation on building a circuit that could do regular watering in the same way without computerised brains? Maybe you could have it so a photocell or something turned a pump on and off once a day
Who is clive!
How about using the output of an alarm clock to trigger a pump twice a day?
@@az55544 Big Clive He's got a channel that's about electronics.
@@KellyS_77and alcohol don't forget the alcohol haha😅
I think if Big Clive engineered a solution, he would probably want to include flames 😀
Well, you've convinced me to buy one of those pumps (Not the watering unit - just the pump) to easily drain my portable air conditioner! Happy to say - it's working surprisingly well!
"It's not so prone to kinking, just because it's bent" - me and that tubing are not the same 😅
Goodness, I'm so into watching immediately I didn't realize you have almost a million. Congratulations and let's make this happen shrimp everywhere.
I have a very nice indoors growing kit that's a complete hydroponic system with a table that floods with water and drains at set intervals, and the one item that took the longest to find a very good one was the water pump and oxygenator kit. I bought 4 of them before finding one I really like, and I do have everything setup on a Raspberry Pi 4 Pro with Bluetooth so I can control things remotely, and check on things like the temperature in the tent and of the water, what the lights are doing, and even what the pH and nutrient-density of the water.
Hello Mr. Shrimp! I usually don't comment, but we have succesfully operated a greenhouse for several years from a similar but better quality pump system. One thing to look out for is algee groth in the clear silicon tubes. This can mes up the pump.
Thank you for being you!
This maybe above your skillset but since you have a two tier garden it would be great to have a water feature/art sculpture/ watering device like the hanging gardens of Babylon, an archimedes screw pump to take the water up thru a series of channels.
I can tell you're a bit annoyed about breaking it but don't worry we've all been there! You've fixed more than you've broken I'm sure :)
Wondering if youve heard of ollas? From 2000bc North Africa, buried unglazed terracotta pots, made into almost sealed vessels using a pot and TC saucer or 2 x pots sealed together with water tight seal and buried in ground, they leech the water into soil through pourous walls of pot, could help with watering while away if you made a big enough one + if you havent id like to see you make one maybe
im honestly surpised he hasnt got one yet, i'd also like to see him make one:)
whatever system you end up with, I think a back-up urchin to check in every couple of days could give you enough added peace of mind to be worth the cost.
Getting more when the pump is close to the water is not strange since you can only suck water up to just below 10 meters no matter what kind or size/power. But a pump can push water or any other liquid up much higher because its on the pressure side.
Please employ a local urchin. They need to start saving now for retirement as by the time they retire, the retirement age will probably have reached 90 and it will cost £10 for a loaf of bread.
Like any would be interested.
@@eadweard. Weed doesn't pay for itself... Mind you, an enterprising urchin could plant a little _side crop_ for educational purposes / personal enrichment.
If your water tank can be elevated then you can use very clever watering system named Tropf-Blumat.
I am using it for several years and if work perfectly. You only need 1m elevation for 10m feeding tube.
The system work without electricity (even no batteries) and without mains water. Just gravity and clay sensors which measures the moisture and control the water flow.
Can't but help feel that the first seller had acquired a number of returns which were mostly due to the motor failure, possibly from the pipe kink issue, possibly just down to poor quality motors, tested the units to see which ones the motor still ran but without actually testing pump function and repackaged them. This would explain not only how you ended up with a wet one (had been in use before failure and return) which corroded while in transit to you but also how they had extra pipe sets that they were effectively just giving away.
I had exactly the same issue with one of these diaphragm pumps, in that case the commutator was scored and after slicing between the interruption points, it was working happily again! Complete pain to have to do though!
Why not just hire someone to come water your plants? Much better alternative than giving money to these less-than-trustworthy sites.
Cultivate your neighbours, watering your garden whilst you're away is what they're for. Thanks for the content.
I was about to say you could ask someone local to nip around to water the plants.... And then you suggested the same. Sometimes low tech solutions are the best.
What about just asking your neighbours to water the plants? 😁
Ahhh that old trick I found this bottle of Frostie Jack in a ditch 😂😂...
Love theys Garden videos very relaxing to watch
I like this series of videos. Please keep it going! You could even get it to where you don't need to water your plants manually, only to bring a new jug of water from time to time.
14:42 Commutator really sounds like a made up word 😂
Yeah like gubernatorial.
or Encabulator
( ua-cam.com/video/RXJKdh1KZ0w/v-deo.html )
Why on earth do you need all this tomfoolery?
Just hang your reservoir in a tree so it siphons down to some dripper nozzles that are done up tight enough to only give as much water as you want.
2 big buckets of water pump takes water out and refills the water that comes out of bucket watring your plarnt
Assuming that the output current of that circuit is 5V, what you can do is remove that low quality motor, and just solder a decent submergeble DC pump in it's place. That way you dont need to tinker with relays or mosfets.
I'm so glad someone else backs up and listens / feels for the click... The amount of times colleagues have looked at me stupidly and said your tightening it the wrong way 🙄 my answer is always it may look wrong *but* at least I'm not breaking the customers stuff - then I'll look at stuff they have worked on and ask why the screw is at an 80 degree angle and not sitting flush, only to get an answer of I don't know - it's as tight as it will go and it was really hard to get in 🤦🤦🤦
Personally I'd have gone for a micropump, generally sourced from an aquarium shop. They are very reliable and flow regulated. Timers are available too or use a smart plug.
I still don't see how you could have hired a sea urchin to water your plants. 😮
as long as it'll run while charging the battery "should" last.
As a student from a small town renting an apartment in a big city, a big thing I got into is gardening in my balcony, it helps a lot with my mental health. I have some small crops (italian peppers, aubergines and lettuces) and flowers. This summer as always I'll be back home for long periods of time so I was searching for "life support" Kind thingies so my plants dont die too. This small project of yours has given me quite the batch of ideas! Thanks for that!
You really just wanted to open it up, didn't you. Be honest now!
Your ingenuity always astounds me! Thank you for the wonders you think of :3
The pump the hospital used to feed me via a PEG tube detected kinks in the tube and sounded an alarm.
As a medical device it was far more expensive and better engineered.
@@Couscous77 lol
@@Couscous77 an alarming kink detector
@@Couscous77it's the machine that goes Bing!
Now, this may be a very overcomplicated solution, but one that doesn't require any power. What if you had a drip fed reservior that had a bell siphon on it? that way, once the drip feed reaches a high enough level, it will suck it up until it depletes to whatever height you set the intake to, and repeat the cycle. I'm not sure if a product like this exists on the market, since the only similar use I've seen is in Quint BUILDS rain gutter power generator (#5) where he used a 3d printed part. I just wanted to share my thoughts
After homebrewing various solutions I broke down a few years ago and bought a set from Irrigatia that charges via a solar cell. Costs a bit more, but I have hade no problems with it (which I had with the homebrew setup)
An empty bottle of Frosty Jacks in a ditch is just so quintessentially British
Sad but true
You could just buy a timer and a pump. Theres lots of hydroponic grow equipment for sale at decent prices (aquarium type pumps start around £15) now and basic plug in wall timers are about £8 iirc and the digital ones about £12. Good luck with it all.
Editing this in.
'Wilm' system is a version of what ur tring to achieve, this uses the same type tubing to feed individual pots off one (aquarium) pump. Any 'aqua pot' type system will also work though the pump for them is different though its been so long since i used them i cant remember specifics.
I was given a water-damaged Dremel (left in a shed in its case) with a very rusty motor that was as dead as a proverbial. Took it apart, cleaned every cubic millimetre and now it works like a charm.
Did wonder if you would be buying a valve doodad from your header tank (like hospitals use for drips). Love watching and hearing your process and progress to ingenious solutions and just sad for the poor urchins who will need to find other work.
Anyhoo, wishing you luck and hope you (and your plants) have a lovely holiday.
i'm not so mechanically inclined but i do work in a hospital, and roller clamps alone with no pump were what made the most sense in my head. you would just need to figure out making the gravity work, but i can't imagine that would be half as complicated as what shrimp went through here. still, the experience of problem solving is part of the reward.
@@blockhead391 I’m so glad you replied because now, instead of “valve doodads…for drips”, I can say “roller clamps” and people won’t think I’m a complete idiot (well, at least not for that reason). 😉👍🏼
As a project manager, this needs a proper risk analysis. The negative outcomes seem quite severe (partial/ full loss of the household's tomato harvest), the design choices (cheep & cheerful with several single points of failure) and the planned absence of all support staff at a critical period in time (heatwave & main growing period) make for a project that I'd want to monitor very carefully... No, I'd earmark it for a potential capital injection, e.g. approve funds for a business urchin on standby to take over the running of the watering can during the PMs absence.
It might be worth considering a simple drip irrigation system in the future. If you can suspend/make a pile of stuff to hold the larger reservoir high enough, you can run a pipe from it straight to your plants, and mediate the flow by stuffing the tube with a wad of wool held in by a bit of wire, or a simple valve if you want to get fancy.
Probably less precise than the pump, but if you want something simple and future proof it might be better suited for your needs.
Looking like a lovely garden!
Interesting follow-up👍 it might have been worth working out hiw much water you need delivered how often first though, and started with the bottle/ reservoir, then working out at what height it needed to be to irrigate successfully, and then work out how much work it would take to lift enough water into it:- chances are that the bottle could work if hung around the height you have the pump currently, so watt-hours per cycle would be massively reduced.
Did you try the shiny motor with the original controller btw? My money is on a failing transistor rather than a burnt commutator/ brush in the replacement unit...
Whatever the pronlem, fingers crossed for you to have peaceful break without the gnawing fear of greenhouse drought👍👍
I doubt they test, mor elikly the earlier one was a return from a dissatisfied customer.
The tubing supplied with it wouldn't be in one piece if a previous customer used it
This is not only incredibly interesting to watch, but makes me want to do this kind of domestic engineering on my own. Great video!
I bought an AliExpress van shower kit for £9, arrived broken, fixed it with some silicone, still working 2 years later, gained more pleasure from fixing it than using it
Pro tip: if you need reliable stuff that you want to take apart and repair if something happens - don't buy an "all-in-one" or a "smart" device. Get a regular good pump from a reputable manufacturer and an electronic timer and put them together. That will be only slightly more expensive but much more reliable and durable and much more repairable.
Sometimes you have to bite the bullet and get a reputable company to supply your pumping equipment 😂😂
I was just thinking that. Sometimes it's worth spending the money to get something that works properly.
Automobile Shower Set Portable Travel Trip Camp Car Caravan 12V Water Pump
Timer Switch DC 12V/24V Digital LCD Programmable Control Time Relay Day/Week
interesting video thanks. i especially like the idea of pumping to a bottle that then has lines going where you want + the use of wire to hold bottle was very nice
Steve Mould did a video a the other week with a solution for your watering. Get a Wirtz Pump that is powered via a windmill. This will bring water up from a barrel. You could have water collecting into the barrel via guttering and then a barrel above where you wish to water, a Wirtz pump taking water from lower barrel to higher one. The higher barrel could have a "tap" that has a pipe connected that then just takes water to where needed using gravity. All you need is a windmill (DIY ONE or get a cheap garden one), 2 barrels 1 with a tap, and some tubing. If you have a pond you could also just use the ponds pump and a siphon system. I think the windmill idea is kinda cool though you can always have an overflow also and a system where the water is recycled. Loads you can do with that system really.
I don't know if Gardena AquaBloom is available in the UK. Anyway, it's a solar powered watering pump. Seems to be good, but my research into the subject is not yet finished.
Greetings from Sweden 🇸🇪
Why don’t you buy a 12v timer switch. Some have various voltage settings. Use in conjunction with a standard 12v submersible pump and build the water flow irrigation yourself.
Can't catch a break on these motors!
Have you considered renaming your channel 'Atomic Womble'? Thanks for your litter-picking work.
I started one of these with an arduino but got sidetracked and never finished it. Basically a bucket that fills with water (from a solenoid valve) using float switches as sensors to keep it filled to the right level (with an overflow into a sump hole in case anything goes wrong). Then a submersible pump with a water flow sensor (hall effect) so the arduino can pump a specific amount rather than based on time. Each plant has an electronic moisture meter which gets read every 24 hours, and that determines if it's time to fill or not and how much. There's also solenoid valves connected to a manifold so one arduino can monitor and water multiple plants independently. This way I could different plants with different pot sizes/water requirements when it was necessary. It was mostly done, I probably should get back to finishing that 🤣
Be very careful with leaving things like this plugged in indefinitely! Most of these cheaper devices with LiON batteries do NOT have proper BMS and if are succeptible to thermal runaway AKA fires. Leaving them on the charger can exacerbate this.
ESP8266 is a cheap, wifi-enabled microcontroller that would work well for a project like this, and you can run simple Python scripts on it. I just finished creating a cloud-controller sprinkler controller using one of those and a 4-channel relay
Just get a cheap Atmel attiny chip, a suitable MOSFET, and a low power pump. The code would likely be just a few lines. Problem is like this product, you could not tell it what time to turn on as those cheap micros don't have a RTC. You could pay more and get one with a RTC if you really want the ability to turn on or off at exact times.
This video really hit home; I don't know how many times I've bought stuff for a project of similar scope and it hasn't been up to scratch, or, equally as often, I've made a silly mistake and killed the thing...
Shrinkflation in action. Frosty Jack's used to be 3 litre bottles - now only 2.5l. What's the world coming to?
Have you looked into the Blumat system?
It works with hollow clay cones that press on a tube forming a valve.
When the soil humidity drops, the valve opens and water drips. No electricity required. and it works off a water tank.
I'm impressed with your efforts on behalf of your toms, wicked guzzlers that they are. Provided If it doesn't conk out in your absence, your proposed setup will doubtless keep them ticking over, at least. Cheeky request, and totally off-topic: could you spare a mo to pin a credit to the artiste responsible for the extro music? Track title too, if poss.
@13:53 - Any drip irrigation system I ever got has the black, semi-rigid tubing for use in the system. I found out about kinking silicone tubing when trying to make nitric acid. The condenser water line kinked and semi-ruined the process. Silicone is nice and flexible - too flexible.
Interesting engineering problem, looking forward to see the final setup.
Honestly I wouldn't blame myself for the second pump dying. I think it's reasonable to expect products to have a useful lifespan if not deliberately abused. Yes, if you left it like that for a week of daily watering and you found it no longer worked, sure, that would be a screw-up. But being able to survive one short cycle in a fault condition is not an unreasonable expectation for any product, cheap or otherwise.
This whole race to the bottom of making products too cheap really annoys me. If you can't not make a product so cheap that it destroys itself at the slightest provocation, then perhaps you just shouldn't make that product. Seriously, if consumers have to pay slightly more than this very soon-to-be e-waste, perhaps that's not such a bad thing if it means things actually last.
Have you thought about putting the big reservoir a the highest point and just restricting the flow so that there is a constant drip to each plant? Purely gravity fed. The water might run out, but hopefully the equivalent of the battery and pump (gravity) doesn't!
Might need to control the watering at the drip heads. You can get adjustable ones from your garden centre. If you trust the pump then you could still use it to fill the reservoir, but just to top up a slow drain.
In the past, I've had good results from Gardena and Hozelock for automatic watering, but it's expensive, and it does require a hose from the mains water.
Maybe look for pumps made for aquarium top off. They seem to do basically what you are trying to accomplish, but you can find very good quality ones. More expensive than this pump, but less expensive than running a water line.
I kind of reiterate what I said on the previous video. It may be more expensive but more worth your time and money to build and customize a solution based on something like an ESP32 microcontroller. You'd have a lot more control over the components and likely far better fault tolerance.
As is often said: You get what you pay for.
Somehow this should be named: Engineeringshrimp - In the next step the pump will get WiFi and can be integrated into Homeassistant. :D
I really hope that his system will do what you aimed for or that someone in the comments will let you know of one.
Really enjoyed this video, hope there is more from "that category".
Search for - Marksman electronic watering they £12.. elevate a waterbutt with a tap 🚰 on the bottom on three rows of bricks..it opens a solenoid on a timer from AAA batteries, the pressure from the height is enough for a greenhouse.. I have two and never missed a beat HTH ✌️
I do toy restoration, and I promise you there is very little to that motor. It doesn't have "brushes" per se. Usually just springly wires that contact the rotor.
I would just pull the motor off, take off the back cover that holds the rotor in, clean it up as best you can, polish the rotor a bit, lube everything up, and stick it back together. There's really nothing that CAN go wrong. It just sounds like it's got mild corrosion preventing good contact with the energy source.
I usually just run an exacto blade across the wire "brushes", to reveal shiny copper and clean the rotor with a q tip, maybe some deoxit, in rare cases I'll use mothers mag and aluminum polish the shine it up, and then clean that off with 99% isopropyl. It's pretty easy and for a guy with your skill level, it'll be a piece of cake.
Some models like Mabuchi style even have a holes in the bottom so you can push the wire brushes back, then reinsert the rotor, then push a small tool through the hole to get the brushes to snap back against the rotor if you're have a problem with reassembly.
The main question would be if your pressure downstairs is strong enough to fill something upstairs (with a standard toilet bottle to stop it entering once filled).
Fact is that it would need rather massive solar panel to produce enough power for a pump. That panel would require heat amount which isn't safe for LiIon battery. so if you can do as much ass possible by gradualy slowly filling high position tank, then it would be easy to power just opening by something like msp430.
you could have used the rusty motor from the 1st purchase with the "pump guts" from the 2nd purchase
(me watching 5 minutes on) .... oh you did, well done
I have looked high and low for a reuse for the electric components of an electric kettle, to no avail. Any ideas? The kettle rusted internally and has sprung a leak.
I went thru several iterations of various cheapo pumps from ali express, ultimately they were generally all unfit or poor performance. If i were you i would buy a "bilge pump" for a boat, hooked up to a 12v battery with the solar trickle charging the battery , probable need an arduino or 12v sonoff to control it using inching , could add a Moisture monitor to soil and all in sub £20 if youve got an old car battery
26:00 Nah. Visit Blumat from Austria and get yourself a bunch of Tropfblumaten.
Brilliant job in making that pump work. I personally don't think it was your fault that the new pump blew. The entire unit from China probably only costs a few cents anyways.
Unlce shrimp why dont you buy a 1m³ container put it at top and just fill it with a hose, then put a timer that opens a valve for a time to get the water going down, saces you the pumping hastle. Theres even smalle containers if you choese, 1m³= 5 barrels, theres from 1/4 barrell to 50 barrels
I ran a small fountain on a small usb aquarium pump and a 20.000 battery pack for your phone before. Lasted a few days before charging. Plus can also add a small solar panel for charging the batter pack, if needed and feeling fancy
Saw Frosty jack's and thought BigClive was going to pop in and Sodastream for us.
You paid £17 for it. If you weren't didn't tear it apart for the video, you would have been well within your rights to send it back. It failed under expected conditions and the seller probably already gets a decent number of returns for this item.
Raspberry Pi Pico might be the right thing though. Pimoroni actually have plenty of plant watering home brew type stuff that’s almost done all the work for you!
Lots on ebay so for £13.99 delivered in the UK, I'm getting one to do some experimenting in my greenhouse ready for when i go away Thank you for another new hobby
Before watch this video. I ordered the same water pump. And in my mind the same idea.. put the same solar panel to recharge the battery. I put all the plants together and go to holidays..and the system works.
Fun fact: this pump is what CoinSquirt uses for transaction handling
fwiw i use a system similar to your goal using a sonof 5v controller running tasmota powering a 5v usb submersible pump to fill 2l milx cartons fitted with a bell siphon made from an old caulk tube, tube wise i use a similar black tuber to yours sourced as an irrigation set, but for inputs i use spare 3/8" beer line and old siphon tubes. the 5v usb pumps are cheap weak links but i am still using the first one after buying a few spares. the usb pumps have a limited head circa 1m only..
Paying a local “urchin” sounds like a much better option. Builds up your networks in the area and gives a local kid some pocket money.