Grain Guardian

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  Visual concept for 'Grain Guardian': an IoT device floating in a fermentation tank, protecting the coffee's quality.

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  Mockup of the app's monitoring screen, showing real-time temperature and pH data.

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  Mockup of the alert notification the farmer receives on their phone when the coffee batch is ready.

Inspiration

The Inspiration: Protecting the Heart of Coffee For small mountain coffee growers, every bean counts. Their livelihood depends on the quality of their harvest, and the fermentation process is the most critical and delicate moment, where good coffee becomes exceptional. However, this crucial step is often done "by eye," an imprecise art that can ruin entire batches and lead to devastating economic losses.

Grain Guardian was born from a simple question: How can we use technology to give these farmers the control and precision they need, in an accessible way and without relying on expensive infrastructure like WiFi? The answer was to create a technological ally: a simple, robust, and low-cost device that watches over the coffee for them.

How We Built It: From Idea to Simulation As a Telecommunications Engineer, my focus was on creating a viable solution for a rural environment. The key was simplicity and energy efficiency.

The Brain: I chose the ESP32 microcontroller for its power, low cost, and most importantly, its integrated Bluetooth Low Energy (BLE) connectivity.

The Senses: I incorporated a DS18B20 temperature sensor and a simulated pH sensor, the two vital indicators for perfect fermentation.

The Simulation: To validate the concept without physical hardware, I used the Wokwi online simulator. I programmed the logic in C++ (Arduino framework) for the ESP32 to read the sensors and trigger an alert in the console when optimal conditions were met (pH < 4.5 and Temp > 18°C).

The Interface: I designed a mockup of the mobile app interface using SVG code, creating clean and professional visuals that show how the farmer would receive data and alerts on their phone.

Challenges and Learnings The main challenge was to conceptualize a solution that was genuinely useful and not just a technological curiosity. This required researching the real problems of coffee farmers. Technically, the challenge was to translate the logic of the fermentation process into simple and efficient code.

I learned that the most impactful innovation is not always the most complex, but the one that solves a real problem in the most direct and accessible way possible.

What it does

How we built it

Challenges we ran into

Accomplishments that we're proud of

What we learned

What's next for Grain Guardian

Built With

• arduino
• bluetooth
• c++
• design)
• energy
• esp32
• for
• framework)
• hardware
• low
• mockup
• simulator)
• svg
• wokwi