🌱⚔️ In-cube-ator

Beat the boss. Water the plant.

A plant cube with a pixel game on its screen. When the soil gets dry, a boss shows up. Win the fight and the plant drinks. 💧

👇 Watch it in action

https://youtu.be/13E1jMrh5Tc

💡 Inspiration

Plants are easy to forget. We wanted a plant that asks for help in a way you would actually notice, so we gave it a video game. Thirsty plant, boss fight, water.

🎮 What it does

A character walks endlessly on screen, so the game is always playable even when the plants are fine. When a plant's soil reads dry, a boss appears and a turn-based battle starts. Win, and the cube runs a small pump to water that plant.

┌──────────────────────────────┐
│ 💧 Water ███████░░░  72%     │  <- status bar, top left
│ ☀️ Light ██████████  100%    │
│ 🌿 Plant A                   │
│                              │
│   🚶  . . .  walking...      │
│                              │
│   ⚠️ SOIL DRY! BOSS APPEARS  │
└──────────────────────────────┘

How a round plays out

Step	What happens	Who does it
1	🌿 Soil sensor reads dry	ESP32
2	👹 A boss walks in	Game
3	⚔️ You win the battle	You
4	💧 Pump waters the plant	Relay and pump
5	🌱 Boss leaves, walk resumes	Game

The cube also has

📡 Two NFC readers, one per pot, so the cube knows which plant is which
💡 A grow light that switches on a timer
🖥️ A status bar showing water, sunlight and other meters

🔘 The demo button

Real soil dries slowly, so the game has a Demo Boss button. It spawns the boss on cue. After that it plays exactly like a real boss, including watering the plant when you win.

🛠️ How we built it

Part	Tech	Job
🧠 Cube brain	ESP32 (Arduino, C++)	Reads sensors, switches relays
🌱 Soil sensing	2 capacitive soil sensors	Lower number means wetter soil
📟 Plant ID	2 PN532 NFC readers	One per pot, each on its own I2C bus
🔌 Switching	4-channel relay	Controls 2 USB pumps and the grow light
📡 Messaging	MQTT (Mosquitto)	ESP32 and Jetson talk through it
🖥️ Game server	NVIDIA Jetson Orin Nano (Python)	Boss logic and battles
🕹️ Game	HTML5 canvas and WebSockets	The pixel game on screen

🔒 Safety built into the firmware. Each pump run has a time cap and a minimum gap between runs, so a bug in the game can never flood a pot.

👥 Team of three. One person on hardware and firmware, one on the Jetson and boss logic, one on the game, art and demo.

🚧 Challenges we ran into

🔀 Both NFC readers use the same I2C address, so each needed its own bus.
🥶 A reader interrupted mid-conversation would freeze after an upload, so we worked on a software reset using its reset pin.
⚡ Wiring a relay board to switch pumps safely, with everything off at boot.
📉 Soil readings are noisy, so we average them and use two thresholds so the boss does not flicker.
⏱️ Turning slow drying soil into something you can show in a short demo.

🧠 What we learned

How capacitive soil sensors read, how relays and shared grounds work, how to split a system between a microcontroller and a bigger computer over MQTT, and why a safety limit belongs in the firmware as well as in the game.