growBot Origins

A new project, a new chance to do a lot of complicated work to avoid a simple repetitive task. This time with plants!

The growBot project started with my fiancee looking for a nice place to keep houseplants. She had found a wooden frame cube with a grow light attached. I took a look and couldn’t help myself. I wanted to make it with timers, lights, irrigation, and anything else a plant could need.

The frame I had built a few months ago for a work project was overkill for this, but made a nice template and an even better workbench. With the wood cut I needed to see about my brackets.

I had grabbed some brackets without a clear plan in mind and found they weren’t quite what I wanted. Luckily the metal was relatively flexible. I bent half of the brackets one way and the other half the opposite way.
When I went to see how the brackets would line up I found that they were a little large. After cutting until my rotary tool died I found my old tin snips was far more effective and helped to clean up some of the edges on the rougher cuts. After trimming the brackets down to size I had lost one of the screw holes on each of them. So onto the next power tool and modification. A little drilling and some careful assembly left me with the basic frame of my new growBot.

The wood frame complete, but I wanted more from it. The sun doesn’t stay in one spot in the sky, so neither will my grow light. A wooden rod, a hole saw, and a few screws later and growBot has a sliding wood block for a grow light.
This just about wraps up the wood working component for now. Moving forward growBot will need some electronics, some code, and some 3D printed parts. In addition to documenting the process here I will make my files available, likely through my github page. Stay tuned for updates, next up I will be making growBot’s brain.