Raspberry Pi Forums

Hi

I am a noob. Sorry about that. Am currently learning the basics of Python and I have a few Rpi's around at home. I'm also building a house. Out of straw.

I have had a pretty reasonable look through all the posts I could see that would relate but I think inexperience in this area is making this complicated for me.

What I will be wanting to do in the not so distant future is to place maybe 10 moisture sensors into the walls of my house - as it will have walls predominantly made of straw this won't be too dificult but what I would really like is some general opinions on how people would collect, store and process the data. My eventual plan would be to have a real-time knowledge of damp areas within the straw but also have a substantial amount of data that I can plot for trend analysis etc.

So - what sensors would you guys use? Would you write your own program in Python (as I am thinking)? What am I completely missing?

I could, of course, go about this using established Windows software I have seen - but I was given 10 Raspi Zero W a few months back and it sounds like a fun project.

Thoughts, if you don't mind, please?

Alex

Maybe these sensors could be useful:

1) BME280

http://embedded-lab.com/blog/making-sim ... 66-bme280/

2) DHT22

https://www.losant.com/blog/getting-sta ... t22-sensor

You could use RPi Zero W or ESP8266 devices as controllers. I recommend to design a MQTT based solution with a Mosquitto MQTT broker running on a RPi.

I'm using two of these in my greenhouse: https://akizukidenshi.com/download/ds/aosong/AM2320.pdf
They work flawless with joan's pigpio library: http://abyz.co.uk/rpi/pigpio/index.html

/emgi

In industry they often take a piece of the material, weigh it, dry it, and re-weigh it to check the difference and calculate the moisture. That's not very automatic, and the interface to the Pi is not too viable there.

Hi guys.

Thanks for the info so far. Obviously this is just me testing the water to see what might be possible.

This project would be for a permanent residence (full-size house) and I suppose I was just looking to see if anything clever may be done.

In all honesty it is fair to say that it isn't something that's necessity driven - but I just love the idea of using these pi's....

I just Googled "straw house" - and it seems I may have been showing my ignorance of some things. I read that the straw is densely packed, so there's not very much "surrounding air". Apparently, the point is to make sure the straw has a low moisture content before it's encased in plaster. Then, theoretically, if no more moisture gets in, there won't be spontaneous combustion. I would think the industry itself (just my short googling revealed there actually is one) - would have some kind of sensor for this purpose, that would be safe, unlike a (potentially) unsafe homemade setup.

Still - this is a very strange concept for me