The answer to all of these questions is "it depends". Whatever you do, there will be a better solution, but the best is the enemy of the good enough, so try a few things and stick with them if they work.
There are probably regulations for the electrical trench, so I can't comment on that, but it would be a good idea to drop a conduit in there for data cabling in the future. There may also be regulations concerning data cabling in a trench, or data cabling adjacent to electrical cabling, so watch out for that too.
Wifi is a fine way to integrate sensors and actuators, but you are limited by range, obstacles, and other devices, so you might have to experiment.
Regarding the NAS, I'd get another Pi for that. You don't want problems with either system affecting the other, or shutting down your greenhouse logger because you want to upgrade your NAS.
Since you are starting from nothing then I recommend starting small. I'd recommend putting a lot of smarts directly in the greenhouse controller, which might be an ESP866 or Pi Pico W, although you could put the Pi in there. You don't want to be in a position where the Pi in the house sends a "start" command for something, then fails (or the network fails) before it can issue a "stop" command. The device in the greenhouse should have some smarts and some safeguards to perform actions safely independently of the Pi. The Pi acts as a monitor and command centre, but the ESP (or whatever) does the work.
Following on from that, think carefully about what could go wrong in the greenhouse, and have secondary systems to warn or fix things if the primary system fails. Bonus points if the secondary systems are dumb and don't need much to operate. For example, if you send a command to turn on irrigation what would happen if the command to stop was never received? Or if the stop command was received, but never actioned? One answer might be "it doesn't matter - there's a huge drain in the floor".
Have fun!
There are probably regulations for the electrical trench, so I can't comment on that, but it would be a good idea to drop a conduit in there for data cabling in the future. There may also be regulations concerning data cabling in a trench, or data cabling adjacent to electrical cabling, so watch out for that too.
Wifi is a fine way to integrate sensors and actuators, but you are limited by range, obstacles, and other devices, so you might have to experiment.
Regarding the NAS, I'd get another Pi for that. You don't want problems with either system affecting the other, or shutting down your greenhouse logger because you want to upgrade your NAS.
Since you are starting from nothing then I recommend starting small. I'd recommend putting a lot of smarts directly in the greenhouse controller, which might be an ESP866 or Pi Pico W, although you could put the Pi in there. You don't want to be in a position where the Pi in the house sends a "start" command for something, then fails (or the network fails) before it can issue a "stop" command. The device in the greenhouse should have some smarts and some safeguards to perform actions safely independently of the Pi. The Pi acts as a monitor and command centre, but the ESP (or whatever) does the work.
Following on from that, think carefully about what could go wrong in the greenhouse, and have secondary systems to warn or fix things if the primary system fails. Bonus points if the secondary systems are dumb and don't need much to operate. For example, if you send a command to turn on irrigation what would happen if the command to stop was never received? Or if the stop command was received, but never actioned? One answer might be "it doesn't matter - there's a huge drain in the floor".
Have fun!
Statistics: Posted by ame — Thu Jun 11, 2026 5:27 am
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