Raspberry Pi Powered Hydroponics: Hello World!

This blog will chronicle my attempts to get a raspberry pi to control and monitor a simple hydroponic set up. Living in an urban setting and still wanting to do a small amount of "farming" hydroponics offers the most efficient use of space/nutrients that won't slow down when it gets cold out! The idea is to do this as cheaply as possible with easily source-able and replaceable parts. The whole set up will be designed to sit inside by a window and have a footprint of ~ 2ft wide x 6ft long x 4ft high. It will hopefully also be able to tweet updates about the system on a regular basis for monitoring purposes.

The Pi will potentially monitor:
-water temp
-water level of the hydroponic reservoir
-light levels in the room
-air temp/humidity both inside and outside the greenhouse portion

This blog will have:
-pictures of the design as I work through it
-parts bought to build the green house and hydroponic parts
-part numbers of electronic monitoring components
-all the python code as it is developed

Here is some resources I have collected as I have begun to think about this problem:

PiPlanter:

http://www.esologic.com/?p=665

Adafruit:

http://www.adafruit.com/products/801

Phidgets- lots of sensors:

http://www.phidgets.com/products.php?category=36&product_id=3550_0

OpenSource environ control:

http://sourceforge.net/projects/envirocontrol/

Atlas pH:

http://atlas-scientific.com/product_pages/embedded/ph.html

ET boxes:

http://www.greenfortune.com/streamgarden.php