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Motivation of The Smart Garden
I cannot count how many times I have bought a plant with the intent to take care of it, and inevitably fail because I become too busy to take care of it. So the obvious solution was to design and build something that would take care of the plant for me. When I attended Mt. San Antonio College I got the opportunity to develop this project with a partner in a class called "C for Engineers." While my experience on such projects were minimal, this project was a great opportunity to expand my knowledge of microcontrollers and sensors.
Initial Design
Initially, my partner and I did not come up with a design for this project, but we did have a conversation on which sensors would be vital to the health of a plant. Ultimately we decided that our project would utilize a photoresistor (light sensor), a temperature sensor, and a soil moisture sensor. The motivation for the soil moisture sensor is pretty obvious, to track how much water the plant is receiving, and tell the system whether or not to turn on a pump to water the plant. The temperature sensor may not be as obvious of a choice, but plants can freeze! Due to this fact, the temperature sensor would be our means of notifying the user via the LCD that the plant needed to be covered. One problem that I could see with this type of notification, is that it would require the user to occasionally take a peak at the display, and if the user is as busy as I, then the plant may freeze either way. Finally, the final sensor we utilized is the light sensor; we used this sensor to tell the user whether or not their plant may be receiving enough light in a particular location.
The Development Process
Outcome of Project
Overall my partner and I developed a project that could not only monitor plant conditions, but also display this data in real time and take actions based on this data. Using the display and a few buttons we were able to create a very intuitive user interface, where the user could move up or down, and select menu items they wished to view. In this design, the project watered the plant once the sensor detected levels below the threshold value. Unfortunately, this also means that when the sensor is removed from soil, the project will attempt to water the plant, which is not ideal as this means the project must be powered down to move the sensor. In this project we were also able to get the smart garden to be powered by direct sunlight, which helps users place the device in any area of the garden where there is enough sunlight to power the device. The downside of this is that the project cannot work at night or in cloudy conditions if not plugged into the wall.
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