as long as I'm confident I'll get an email (if) there ever is a problem... such as the electric going out to that outlet (bad wiring?) or the water stopping on that line... or the hose breaking and water never reaching the plants... there's a million ways that it can go wrong, and then my precious plants die....Setting it up the way you envision (full remote control outside the home) is definitely possible to do, for an embedded system it might be easier to code another device (ESP32 or another low power chip with wifi capability) other than a raspberry pi due to the OS complicating things. However if you choose not to go that way and focus on only controlling one device when you're nearby then BlueTooth is probably your best bet. There are other methods such as Zigbee which could allow you to do mesh networking (to control multiple seperated devices at once) which would really help you market it as a modular solution to fit any type of garden. The chips are pretty cheap too.
As for market need, if it was fully automated so I could set and forget, then I for one would definitely be willing to pay for an effective, reliable and easy to use solution.
Questions:
what happens when electric goes out?
what happens when water goes out?
what happens when pi gets fried by lightning and can no longer function? do I get a note there is a problem?
what happens if water pump fails (pi still sends signal, but no water comes out)
what happens if pump works, but no water reaches plants (hose broke)?
what happens if plants get infected with bugs and die, but you keep putting water on it, but it doesn't get used... does it automatically send less water?
what happens when the plant grows and needs more water?
I love finding problems/ solutions.... the above are questions that any serious customer wants to have covered, but a lot of them won't think about asking.
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