PicoPH — a Raspberry Pi Pico pH/EC monitor
A DIY water-quality monitor for the hydroponic garden — a Pi Pico reading pH and EC probes through signal-conditioning boards, in a 3D-printed enclosure I designed by hand-sketch.
Hydroponics lives and dies on water chemistry — pH and EC (how strong the nutrient solution is). Buying a commercial monitor is easy; building one teaches you what the numbers actually mean. So I built PicoPH.
A Raspberry Pi Pico reads two analog probes — pH and EC — each through its own signal-conditioning board (the blue trimmers set offset and gain during calibration), with the BNC-terminated probes dropping into the reservoir.
The enclosure started as a hand sketch — board spacing, standoffs, cable-gland cut-outs — and became a printed box sized to the exact hardware (that’s the sketch-and-box up top).
Then it went to work, watching the towers:
It’s the project that ties the three hobbies together: a bit of electronics, a bit of 3D printing, in service of the garden.