iPlant

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  Internal components and wiring for iPlant.

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  code (part1)

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  code (part2)

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  code (part3)

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  code (part4)

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  code (part5)

Inspiration

Peter and Eric wanted a way to both celebrate the arrival of spring and develop a cool product for their ESE190 final project. What better way than an iPlant!

What it does

The iPlant indicates it's receiving necessary light by smiling and spinning. iPlant reports how much light it is receiving to the Blynk app, so you know it is getting the light it needs even when you are away from home.

How we built it

The iPlant utilizes a stepper motor, sevo motor, photoresistor, and MAX7219 module. When light shines on the photoresistor, the stepper motor rotates the flower 360 degrees and the servo motor rotates the 'smiling' dot matrix. The photoresistor is connected to two wires, rather than directly to the breadboard, so that it can be placed at whatever level is desired. The Blynk app was used to track the sunlight over WiFi.

Challenges we ran into

We first tried the servo motor for the rotating flower part, but weren't able to get the results we hoped for. We switched to the server motor to get a full 360 degree rotation. It was also hard to get the photoresistor to receive light away from the breadboard, but the two wires solved that problem.

Accomplishments that we're proud of

We are proud of our ability to combine the functionalities of 3 new components in the kit with something we were more familiar with. It was exciting to produce a moving part which we had never done before!

What we learned

We learned 3 new components from the Uno Starter Kit, code to control the stepper motor, servo motor, and dot matrix, and new functionalities of the Blynk app.

What's next for iPlant

The next step for iPlant is to add cool new features and decorations in the marketing department.

Built With

• arduino