Author: habe

This week, I continued to do more research on the specific types of sensors and equipment that we would need to physically build the greenhouse system. Using the information I gathered and the feedback we got from our weekly meeting with the instructors, I refined the shopping list and block diagram that I created last week. After that, I filled out the purchase request forms for the items on the updated shopping list, and filled out the form to request TechSpark access in order to wire the sensors to the ESP32 and solder the temperature sensor. 

While processing our purchase request forms, Quinn contacted me about our order from Home Depot saying that it may be better for me to pick the items up directly from Home Depot since Home Depot uses their own drivers, which requires us to arrange a specific delivery date and time to receive the order. Therefore, I took the bus to the Wilkins Home Depot in order to pick up the LED plant grow lights on Friday. I was also able to drop by HH 1307 in order to pick up a breadboard and some wires on Friday as well.

Also, we spent time this week putting together the design review presentation slides. I added the slides that had to do with the hardware aspect of our project, and created a visual image of what I imagine the greenhouse will look like when it’s assembled.

Overall, I think I am on schedule. I’m hoping that the orders will start arriving next week, so that I can start assembling the greenhouse and programming the ESP32 boards. I will also be working on the design review report next week with my teammates.

This week, I practiced presenting our proposal presentation earlier in the week, and continued to do more research on the specific types of sensors and equipment that we would need to physically build the greenhouse system. Using the information I gathered on these topics, I started to create the block diagram for the hardware side of the greenhouse. Drawing the diagram helped me break down the project into smaller parts, and helped me think about the small details that I hadn’t noticed before.

 

Also, taking into account the feedback that we received from our status reports that we submitted last week, I created a rough shopping list of the parts that we would need to build the greenhouse (excluding the camera, since Sarah is in charge of them). There definitely needs to be more work done on the shopping list, since I need to contact the ECE lab to see if I can borrow some parts, and I realized there are some parts that I do not know if I need them until I start building the greenhouse.

Overall, I think I am on schedule. Next week, I hope to complete the shopping list by communicating with the TA and the ECE lab technician, and start submitting purchase request forms. Also, I would like to finalize my block diagram and integrate it with the software side of the project, and work on other parts of the design review presentation slides.

This week, I did some more research on the specific types of sensors and equipment that we would need to physically build a greenhouse system. Since we need to send the sensor data and commands to the system over wifi, I looked into “smart” sensors and water irrigation systems that come with the capacity to connect to wifi, as well as ways to connect analog sensors to wifi using various equipment such as RPi, STM32, ESP32, Arduino Uno, etc. We needed to decide on how we were going to water the plants, so I did some research on the pros and cons of various watering systems such as sprinklers, drip irrigation, surface irrigation, etc.

We also took into consideration the feedback we got from our abstract and decided we needed a more quantitative requirement for our greenhouse. Using the research Sarah did on plants, specifically pea shoots, I came up with specific metrics (temp, soil moisture percentage, light intensity) to determine the success and effectiveness of the greenhouse.

Using the information I gathered on these topics, I created slides in the proposal presentation that had to do with the hardware and sensor systems of our project. Overall, we are on schedule to submit our proposal presentation slides on time and give our presentation next Tuesday.

Next week, I hope to narrow down the equipment that we need for our project by doing more research and receiving feedback from our proposal presentation. I plan on making a spreadsheet with specs and prices of the various components to make sure we have everything that we need within the budget. I also plan on looking up documentation and repos of similar projects that are online.