So, I bought my first Arduino a while back and was curious as to what i would make first. 

Then i ran across the garduino project.  That was it, i knew what i was going to do. 

My garden robot can monitor up to 6 planters individually and can automaticall water 4 planters when each planter needs watering. 

The trick is that i only use one pump to achieve this.  I build myself a little distributor out of 4 1 inch copper elbows.  The pipes running out of these are gravity feed to my planters.

The heart of the distributor is a servo hooked up to a long stick pushing the nozzle along a stretch of model railway track.  The slider is made up of one of the carriage trucks from a freight train.

here is a better look at the servo.

The free wheeling nature of the train truck induced some severe oscilations so i build a damper.  out of a match box full of nails to push down on a cross bridge the the actuator arm slides under.  This was not enough so i added 3 1 oz weights to get an oscillation free operation.

Rather than fiddle with Arduino and time and all that stuff i have a small listener on the arduino and all of the major decision making is made on a python system on an old mac OS machine that was kicking around with a dead battery.

And of course here is the Mandatory Arduino control center glued onto my relay box (I have two relays hooked up to control the light and the pump)

If you want more information please email me at sillyfunnypedro at gmail dot com

I am intending on making this a better documented site but am crazy busy so it may be a while.