Draco

Draco is an automated plant watering system for Raspberry Pi. It controls a 4-relay shield to drive a water pump and up to three valves, with optional Telegram and MQTT integration for remote monitoring and control.

Features

Interface	Required	Description
GPIO	Yes	Controls the 4-relay shield (pump + valves)
Scheduler	Conditional	Time-based automatic watering (activated by default when Telegram/MQTT are disabled)
Telegram	No	Remote commands and log streaming
MQTT	No	Integration with Home Assistant or any MQTT broker

Supported combinations

• GPIO + Scheduler
• GPIO + Telegram
• GPIO + MQTT
• GPIO + Telegram + MQTT
• GPIO + Scheduler + Telegram + MQTT

Note: If neither Telegram nor MQTT is enabled, the scheduler activates automatically. Watering runs at the interval defined in config.json (first run after holidays_frequency_days days from start).

Requirements

• Raspberry Pi (any model with GPIO)
• Python 3.9+
• uv (recommended) or pip

Installation

With uv (recommended)

git clone https://github.com/jpizquierdo/Draco.git
cd Draco
uv sync

With pip

git clone https://github.com/jpizquierdo/Draco.git
cd Draco
python -m venv .venv
.venv/bin/pip install .

Configuration

Copy and edit the example config:

cp config/config.yaml config/my_config.yaml

Key fields in config.yaml:

telegram_bot:
  enable: true
  api: YOUR_TELEGRAM_BOT_TOKEN
  allowed_users:
    user1: CHAT_ID

relayshield:
  WaterPump: 4
  Valve1: 22
  Valve2: 6
  Valve3: 26

scheduler:
  holidays_frequency_days: 3
  water_start_time_HH: "10"
  water_start_time_MM: "00"
  water_stop_time_HH: "10"
  water_stop_time_MM: "02"
  enable_alive_logging: false

mqtt:
  enable: true
  broker_ip: 192.168.1.153
  broker_port: 1883

GPIO pin numbers refer to BCM numbering.

Usage

# With uv
uv run python draco.py -c config/config.yaml

# With activated venv
python draco.py -c config/config.yaml

Running as a systemd Service

See docs/systemd/how_to_systemd.md.

Home Assistant Integration

MQTT-based switch configuration and a custom Lovelace card are provided under docs/homeassistant/.
See docs/homeassistant/readme.md for setup instructions.

Telegram Commands

See docs/telegram_commands.md for the full command list to register with @BotFather.

Roadmap

• Moisture sensor support for demand-based watering
• DHT temperature and humidity sensor integration

Contributing / Feedback

Open a discussion to ask questions, share your setup, or propose ideas.

License

MIT