Inspiration
Actually, a small plant at the entrance of AGH. It looked like no one was taking care of it so, we dcided to build a project that would fix that problem.
What it does
It takes away from the user the reponsibility of constantly caring for the plant. Reminding the user when to plant or alerting them when conditions risk harming the plant, helps keep the plant healthy with no additional worries in the mind of the user. Additionally, it provides, temperature and humidity data of the surrounding environment, while showing the time to the next watering and the percentage of soil moisture.
How we built it
Components: 1) Arduino - Breadboard 2) Blynk 3) Capacitive Soil Moisture Sensor 4) DHT11 5) Red and Green LED lights 6) RTC 7) Passive Buzzer
The code detects all the sensor meaasurements and sends them to blynk, while it sets a threshold for soil moisture percentage so that when it gets too low it alerts the user, flashes the red LLED light and acitvates the passive buzzer.
Challenges we ran into
We found the soil moisture sensor hard to measure and calibrate to the 0-100 percentage we needed for the project to work. We overcame this by constantly testing the sensor in dry and wet environments to determine what our boundaries should have been.
Accomplishments that we're proud of
We are proud of how our project looks. It is built from household objects plus the addition of the Arduino and we believe would fit well within any home, as a cool gadget to show.
What we learned
The most important thing we learned was how to code so that it aligns with our sensors and our wiring. Now we both feel confident in our abilitieis to code for the Arduino and structure a circuit.
What's next for Power Plant
The next step in our building process is to add an irrigation system which would automatically water the plant.
Built With
- arduino
- blynk
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