Usimaki Watering Robot
It brings the hose. You keep your afternoon.
A GPS-guided rover that drives out from the garden tap, aims a nozzle at the spot that needs water, and winds its hose back in on the way home.
How it works
Four jobs, one small rover
Drives a route
Routes are drawn on a map in the phone app. The rover follows them using GPS and a compass, and can be driven by hand with an on-screen joystick.
Aims the nozzle
The nozzle turns and tilts on two servos. Give it a GPS point and it stays locked on that spot, even while the rover turns underneath it.
Knows its range
Spray distance is measured with a tape, not guessed. The robot stores those measurements and picks the tilt that lands the water where it was told.
Manages its hose
A motorised reel pays hose out as the rover leaves and winds it back as it returns, guided by a tension arm that feels slack and pull.
Built to fail safe
When something goes wrong, the water stops
A robot holding a running hose needs sensible defaults. These are designed in from the start.
- The valve closes by itselfEvery spray is timed. The valve is normally closed, so a reset or lost connection shuts the water off.
- It will not outrun its hoseThe robot remembers where the tap is and refuses a route that goes farther than the hose reaches.
- A jammed reel stops the roverIf the reel stalls or a sensor wire comes off, driving stops rather than dragging the tap off the wall.
Under the hood
Current design
| Controller | Arduino Mega 2560 |
|---|---|
| Navigation | GPS with compass and inertial sensing |
| Control | Android app over Bluetooth, with map routes and a joystick |
| Nozzle | Two-axis pan and tilt, with a 12 V shut-off valve |
| Hose | Designed around 15 m of ½ inch garden hose |
| Reel | 12 V worm gearmotor, drum encoder, tension arm |
| Power | 12 V battery |
Project status
In development
The watering robot grew out of a GPS test rover. It is a home project today, built one tested stage at a time.
- Test roverGPS route following and the phone app.
- Watering firmwareNozzle aiming, spray range, valve, and hose reel control written.
- Hardware build and bring-upFitting the nozzle, valve, and reel, then testing each one on its own.
- First wet runEverything together, in the garden, with the tap on.