Ultraponic tower garden

thingiverse

Here is an experimental ultraponic tower garden. You can find a lot of these towers with 3D printed parts. But IMHO, they use too much filament... So with my son, we have designed this setup to use as less as possible filament and to reuse cheap 100mm diam PVC pipes. The holes are directly drilled into the pipe with a 50mm hole saw. You just have to clip the inserts in place and if you want glue them with epoxy glue. With a 90cm pipe we have inserted up to 12 hydroponics baskets net cups. The cups are also 3D printed and fit exactly into the holes in order to avoid most of the fog leaks when running. We use a small 5V pump to push water from the bottom tank to the small top one. 3 misters produce fog which is falling down by gravity. The roots are then fed by the nutriants but without being washed. Filling the to reservoir is done once every hour and lasts not more than 30s. https://youtu.be/i-2oXpokJVc The 3 misters are trigerred 3s each in a cycle which draws less than 6W power. see tests here : https://youtu.be/Hyj7I6UKJqU Consequently this not an "hydroponics" system but an "ultraponics" one ! Ultraponics relies on the principle of aeroponics and pushes it to the extreme, with a much finer misting. The nutrient solution is completely absorbed by the pores of the roots. The electronics is quite simple and powered by an ESP32 MCU which will be hidden at the very top of the tower under a lid (to be designed :-)) We are just experimenting this tower. Follow this job in progress ! Note that the prototype is fully printed with plastic bottle PET filament ! (details here : https://www.thingiverse.com/thing:4969225) The PVC pipe is inserted into half a roll of filament and then into a hole drilled into the lid of the bottom reservoir. This base is stabilizing the pipe which remains vertical !