LIDL Parkside holiday plant irrigation system teardown - with schematic

Описание: A full teardown of the LIDL Parkside holiday plant irrigation kit. In the UK the word "holiday" means vacation. So this would probably be called a vacation plant irrigation system in the USA.

This system will require a bit of experimentation to set up, so I'd suggest doing it weeks before you go on holiday, although it could also be used as an alternative to normal plant watering.
It consists of a submersible pump and a power supply that powers the pump for one minute every day. That power supply with its timing function could be useful on its own for other applications.

The pump is submerged in a bucket of water mounted below the level of the plants to avoid syphoning, and it feeds up to three manifold blocks that then distribute the water to as many watering points as needed.

There is no individual flow regulation, so for larger plant pots you just use more watering pipes that are held in place by spikes that accommodate up to three pipes per spike.

The power supply is where all the timing magic happens, and it is locked to just one minute operation per day. Theoretically you could just use a 12V DC power supply plugged into a timer socket if you wanted a different watering schedule.

The circuitry in the power supply seems well designed with good electrical separation for countries with good electrical standards. It does seem to have omitted a diode to protect against collapsing field transients from the motor though. Even with the inherent diode inside the MOSFET package I still prefer the use of an extra freewheel style diode across inductive loads.

This kit has a lot of scope for making a custom watering setup for other applications.



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