Sarah’s Status Report for 5/8

This week, the team prepared for the final presentation, and I presented it. We met on Friday to embed the live stream onto the website and to have the RPi CV application run when the hardware and website are up. I created a video script for the CV application part of the demo and took images and videos of the CV application at work. I worked with Kanon to get the live stream into the website, and it was a simple embedding an HTML iframe tag and referencing the localhost the video could be browsed on to the bottom of the website. The team also completed the final poster, and Kanon and I connected our block diagrams to show the full integration of the CV application onto the website and through SMS.

I was able to catch up and complete the remaining tasks for the CV application and its integration to the whole greenhouse. All of our components are working, and we are ready for the public demo.

Next week, I hope to add the testing results, the changes on the schedule and design, and overview of the project and class into the final report. My team and I will also prepare for questions or demonstrations that may be requested in the public demo.

Team Status Report for 5/1

This week, the team worked on putting all the components together. Kanon and  Hiroko worked on the communications between the website and the hardware, and recorded the test results to verify metrics have been met. Sarah came over to the greenhouse and recalibrated the CV application parameters based on the different lighting and picture quality from placing the plants in the greenhouse.

Some risks that we encountered this week were making the soil moisture sensors waterproof. Hiroko was able to find some heat shrinks in the ECE department and use that for the soil moisture. Sarah currently has a large false positive and negative rate on the dark spotting disease detection, so she is going to cover the area surrounding the plant with white paper to get more accurate testing results.

There were slight software infrastructure changes made to the CV Application. Instead of finding a stem, Sarah decided to measure bending by measuring the angle between the Y-axis and the line between the flower to the plant center, since this was a much more efficient and accurate way to detect stem bending. She has changed that in her block diagram.

We are on task so far, and Sarah and Kanon’s collaboration to embed the live stream on the website is the only thing pushed to this upcoming week.

Sarah’s Status Report for 5/1

This week, the team worked on combining all the components together. I went to Hiroko’s place in the beginning of the week and recalibrated some of the HSV filters and edge detection to work with the background of the greenhouse and the UV lighting. Because some of the flowers that I brought from home were withering, I went to buy more flowers and plants to test under the greenhouse. I tested my growth stage classifier with the current pea shoots I have and with images of the pea shoots from sprouting to maturity. I also tested this component with the new flowers I bought to make sure that the flower and fruit detection were working for the growth stage classifier. For the disease and withering detection, I tested this on my peashoots, withering Pansy flower plants and the new flower plants I bought. For the stem detection, I tested this with the old and new flowers I have.

I am slightly behind on my tasks, as I need to work with Kanon this week to embed the live stream onto the website. I also would’ve liked get the CV application to automatically run when the RPi boots but I will work on that next week.

Before the final deadline for the poster, video, and report, I will be working on a script that turns on the CV application automatically when the RPi boots. Once I get those tasks done, I will try to recalibrate the disease finder, because the false positive and negative rates are too high as of now.

Sarah’s Status Report for 4/24

This week and the week of the Interim Demo, the team finished up their individual components and completed the Ethics Assignment and Discussion. I worked on recognition of darker spotted diseases on plants. I simulated this by coloring in some of the leaves with reddish/ blackish dots which is the most common pattern of plant disease. Because of the background noise, I implemented a more accurate edge detection method to white out the background, and since some of the disease detection got in the way by the fruits or flowers, I made sure to white out those parts of the image too and only analyze diseases on the leaves. I also implemented bending of the plants by measuring the midpoint of the pot, then connecting flowers to the midpoint to see how bent the stems are from the roots of the plant. I added the Twilio API messaging system to report growth status updates through SMS as well.

I am slightly behind, because I planned on integrating most of the components together by today, but I am having some issues detecting dark spotting diseases, so I will be working on correcting that today before I move on and will work on connecting the whole system tomorrow.

Next week, I plan to have most of my testing done so that I have some testing and metrics to show for the final presentation, I would like to work on setting up the RPi to run the CV automatically when the RPi boots. Since I am coming to Hiroko’s place on Monday, I will also integrate the RPi and CV application with the greenhouse, so hopefully we can get the live stream embedded onto the website.

Sarah’s Status Report for 4/10

This week, we all worked on our individual components to present on the Interim Demo. I finished my fruit/ flower detection and improved it so that it can find the most common types of flowers and fruits by working with the most common flower and fruit colors. I combined the fruit/ flower detection that I implemented with HSV Color Detection, and the pixel per metric function to make a growth classification system that will use these two parameters to notify the user on whether a new growth stage has been reached. The notifications are sent to the website and the user’s phone number through the Twilio API. I also made a program where the plant is separated from the background using Edge Detection, then the fruits or flowers are wiped out with HSV color detection to get the leaf alone. I am currently testing for the program to be able to detect white and discolored brown spotting, which is a common plant disease pattern, as well as withering. Further, I realized that I could be more specific with my testing metrics such as the accuracy of my pixel per metric when predicting the real height of the plant, so I will change some of my metrics to be more specific and critical of my application.

I am a bit behind schedule, as I would’ve liked to have my application run smoothly by Friday, but I still have to debug the disease detection and the Twilio API notification sending system. I will spend my weekend doing so and will have these functionalities prepared for the Interim Demo.

Next week, I hope to start on the plant vine and stem bending algorithm and test that out the following week. Based on the critiques from the Interim Demo and my own judgement of the quality of my CV application, I will change parameters and fine tune my application in the remaining weeks. I also plan on making stricter testing requirements and testing the CV application with these metrics in mind.

 

 

 

Team Status Report for 4/3

This week, while we worked on our individual components, we also began to connect those components together. Sarah was able to embed the video to a simple HTML site running on local host, so we are expecting the transition from this to the actual website will be smooth. Hiroko and Kanon worked on the connection of the ESP32 to AWS, and were successfully able to send and receive data. All of us also planted some pea shoots for testing. Sarah was able to test her growth classifier implemented by detecting the sprouting of the pea shoots. Hiroko and Kanon are now able to test the sensors and make adjustments for better pea shoot growth.

Some risks that we need to look out for on the hardware side is to setup the wires and boards safely so that no water, moisture, or biomaterial will touch it. Depending on how the setup goes, we may need to make some containers and use zip ties to tie the hardware to certain parts of the greenhouse. With the TechSpark lab equipment and materials nearby Hiroko and Kanon, we can create containers if necessary. For the computer vision, the background of the greenhouse may be in the way of proper analysis, so to prevent that we will have a monochrome background to mitigate such issues, and Sarah is currently working with a box as her background for the CV analysis. The camera may also be difficult to adjust once it is placed in the greenhouse, so we are considering a RPi camera module stand and mount if we find issues fixing the camera onto the greenhouse.

Sarah had to adjust some parts of the CV implementation systems. Since the real colors of the greenhouse are washed out in night vision, we’ve decided to only have CV analysis going on in daylight when the IR filter is switched back on. We found that it is unnecessary to have the CV running when the users are asleep and when plant growth is very gradual. Further, the leaf and flower detection along with the defect detection will only be applied from the young plant stage to the harvest stage and not in germination, since most defects occur during those growth stages. Kanon had to calibrate some values that the soil moisture sensors read to percentages for user readability, and with the deployment and user testing coming up, she may have to adjust some of the UI. On the hardware side, Hiroko needs to adjust the watering tube so that water is distributed more evenly and adjustments like the making a container may be needed when the system is integrated to the greenhouse this upcoming week.

The schedule is mostly the same, but instead of shipping the RPi and the camera, Sarah has decided to bring the RPi and camera in May. Full integration of the greenhouse is therefore delayed by a week, but that gives us more time to work on our individual components and Sarah setting up the CV equipment herself will save more time for the integration process.

Sarah’s Status Report for 4/3

This week, we continued to work on our individual components, and we all planted the pea shoots. I tested whether night vision works in complete darkness, and it does so there is no extra LED lights needed in the dark. I’ve decided to turn off some CV analysis once the camera switches to night vision, because without the original colors of the image, we cannot perform proper analysis. Further, the plants grow very gradually day by day and assuming gardeners will be asleep at night, its unnecessary for the constant analysis. I was able to test my pea shoots that already sprouted, and using the pixel per metric method, I was able to classify the pea shoots as sprouting. I will need to adjust the camera and planting tray position to get a perfect sideview of the pea shoots for more accurate plant height calculation. Currently, I am working on making each leaf and flower an object and going through the list of objects to distinguish the difference and determine whether they are healthy, diseased, or withered with some edge detection and another layer of HSV Color Detection.

I am a bit behind schedule, as I wanted to test some pea shoots for defects, but I can’t do that until the pea shoots grow a little more so by next week they should be good to detect defects and I still need to fix some issues with my code. I changed my application to detect defects in the young plant, flowering, and harvesting stage, as plants tend to be diseased or withered around this time.

Next week, I will be working on sending notifications with the Twilio API to the website and SMS, as this is a part of the integration of the CV analysis to the website. Since the growth stage classifier is almost completed, I will test whether the user receives the correct notification about what growth stage the plant is in, and if it sends the correct amount of notifications. I also hope to have the leaf and flower detection, and defect detection completed before Interim Demos.

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Sarah’s Status Report for 3/27

This week, the team and I continued to work on our individualized parts. I was able to complete the live streaming script for 24/7 monitoring of the greenhouse, and I am hoping to link that to our website once the RPi is sent to Kanon and Hiroko.  Instead of doing HSV Color Detection and Edge Detection on online images of pea shoots, I was able to do that with images through my RPi of some of the succulents I have at home so that the CV is applied on realistic greenhouse/outdoor lighting. Currently, I am working on getting the CV to distinguish leaves and flowers, and I’ve completed my pixel per metric by measuring the bounding box that outlines the stem and top of the plant in the image to the real size of the succulent that I was testing. I figured out a way to work with the RPi without using a monitor or keyboard and instead using a VNC viewer which connects to my RPi through Wifi and displays the RPi OS right to my computer, which allows me to test my CV analysis through real time videos from the RPi instead of through RPi images . I also planted some of the pea shoots so that some can sprout by next week and I can properly test my growth stage categorization algorithm on pea shoots rather than the succulents.

I am slightly behind my tasks, as I wanted to test the night vision and get the flower and leaf recognition implemented, but I completed the growth stage pixel per metric algorithm and refined my HSV Color Detection and Edge Detection. My RPi stopped working in the beginning of the week, so I had to borrow my friend’s RPi until my new one came through.

Next week, I hope to be able to test my growth stage classifier with the sprouting pea shoots. I would like to finish my implementation on leaf and flower recognition, so that I can have the minimum to test the defect detection which would use another layer of HSV Color Detection on the parts of the leaf and flower. I will also make sure that the 24/7 monitoring is applicable during night.

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Sarah’s Status Report for 3/13

For this week, the team prepared for the design review presentation and worked on our individual components.

With the equipment all here, I was able to connect the IR-Cut camera to the Raspberry Pi, and create a webcam connection to the laptop with the MicroSD card. I am currently using a random plant in my house to find the right HSV values to extract and the best lighting for CV analysis. I was also following up on tutorials on how to do CV analysis of live streaming images.

I spent time on writing the project management and summary components of our design review documentation, and will be working on the design trade studies and systems review portion of the document.

I am a bit behind my CV analysis implementation, as I wanted to have some sort of analysis implemented through the RPi camera, but the RPi connection took a bit longer than I thought and I had midterms this week. As for the group as a whole, we are on time with our deliverables and will be meeting on Monday to finalize the design document.

By next week, I hope to have the growth stage classifier and half of the disease detection implemented with the extra time I have from no homework in other classes for this upcoming week. I will also start growing one of the pea shoots because I need some testing materials for the growth stages.

Team Status Report for 3/6

This week, we all worked on our individual design block diagrams for the design review presentation, looked into more risk factors, and began implementing our components. We also ordered all the materials we need and we have received most of them. We made a list of bills and materials and are working on the design documentation report as well.

Hiroko looked into the sensors she will be working with and ordered all the materials that she needed and picked up a few from Home Depot. Then, she made a visual design of how the greenhouse will look like and created the hardware block diagram which specified all the relays and feedback loops in the system. She also signed up for access to TechSpark in order to solder the sensors to the ESP32 , and hopes to receive some help from TAs to properly soldering the sensors. Kanon created the website login and registration as well as the main page where there is a toggle to change temperature, a switch for turning on/ off the light, a. soil moisture modifier, and a section for putting the live stream video later on.  She also found Twilio, an API aids in notifications and alerts to users, which would help our project significantly. She updated her block diagram with the Twilio API included. Sarah researched the OpenCV modules more, and layed out the algorithms and components she would need to properly implement a CV application for plants. In specific, she figured out HSV Color detection and edge detection for images. She also received her materials and is setting up the hardware to do proper CV analysis.

Some risks we are looking into is receiving the wrong data from the database, and to mitigate this issue we are thinking about either regaining the data before outputting the value to the website or to notify the website if drastic changes take place. We are also hoping that the night vision in the IR-Cut cameras will work properly, but in the case that it does not we will need to reconfigure the LED lights to be on a certain brightness for night vision to work. After testing the OpenCV module, we found it very important that the subject we are analyzing contrasts with the background or the unnecessary components of an image, so we are looking into making a monochrome backdrop in the greenhouse that provides the best contrast. Any unexpected issues that we may come across with the hardware, we have decided that our system will be able to detect and notify the user about it.

We updated our schedule a bit to figure out when to start planting the pea shoots and which tests we will be conducting on which days. We’ve decided that we would plant the pea shoots a week before testing, as it takes around 7 days for pea shoots to sprout and grow. Below are also some images of visible progress.

 

Web site progress: