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Team Status Report for 5/8

This week,  all of us met in person to finish integrating our individual work into one project, while each of us finished up the remaining tasks that were left to do for the individual subsystems. Kanon and Hiroko did more testing on the greenhouse control system to make sure that users can control all environmental variables including the heating, soil moisture, and lighting schedule.  Sarah and Kanon worked on getting the live stream of the plant into the website.

Sarah prepared for and presented the final presentation this week to the whole capstone section. We also created our final poster, and started working on our video. We individually recorded our audio, so we only have to get the visuals (pictures, diagrams, and video clips) together for the video to be finished.

We are all on schedule so next week, we will work on the final report, and get ready for the final demo.

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Hiroko’s Status Report for 5/8

This week,  all of us met in person to finish integrating our individual work into one project. Kanon and I did more testing on the greenhouse control system to make sure that users can control all environmental variables including the heating, soil moisture, and lighting schedule. I also worked with Sarah to integrate the Raspberry Pi and camera into the greenhouse system.

We also created our final poster, and started working on our video. We individually recorded our audio and I pasted them together on iMovie, so we only have to get the visuals (pictures, diagrams, and video clips) together for the video to be finished.

Next week, we will work on the final report, and get ready for the final demo.

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Hiroko’s Status Report for 5/1

This week, I worked on testing and measuring the data transmission speed between the software and hardware, waterproofed the soil moisture sensors, and worked on the final presentation slides.

Kanon and I worked on testing and measuring the data transmission speed between the website and hardware. In our design review presentation, we had requirements and testing metrics for the data transmission speed and so far, it looks like we meet those requirements.

I contacted Quinn about heat shrink tubes to waterproof the soil moisture sensors, and luckily, there were some for use in the ECE lab. I was able to use the heat shrink tubes to cover up the electrical components on the soil moisture sensor.

So far, I am on schedule. Next week, I plan on finishing up testing the hardware requirements, and start working on the final video/poster.

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Hiroko’s Status Report for 4/24

This week, I prepared for the ethics discussion and finished adjusting the wire length of all of the electrical components. I ordered the junction box to enclose the electrical components early last week, but Amazon removed the item from its website, so I had to order a similar item. This delayed the arrival of the junction box by a week, and I just received it today.

The junction box arrived a week later than expected, which delayed the testing process. I am planning on testing the sensor data accuracy/lag to make sure that our sensors meet our greenhouse requirements with Kanon as soon as possible. Sarah is also planning to install the camera and RPi onto the greenhouse next week, so we are planning on integrating the camera into the greenhouse system soon.

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Team Status Report for 4/10

This week, each of us worked on our individual components to present on the Interim Demo. Sarah finished the 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. Kanon worked on deploying the website onto EC2 and conducted a survey to test the website UI with 5 people. Hiroko adjusted the watering tube to distribute water more evenly to the plants, started adjusting the wires and cords to figure out the specific layout of the electrical components, and did some research on junction boxes on that would be suitable for encompassing the electrical components.

We made some changes to our schedule this week to account for the fact that Sarah will setup the CV application on the greenhouse on April 25th to integrate the Raspberry Pi and the camera into the greenhouse hardware system. We moved the individual system tests to come before the physical integration of the Raspberry Pi and the camera.

We are taking some risks by using the last available week to integrate the Raspberry Pi and the camera into the greenhouse  hardware system since we will not have much time to debug or order new components even though it will be an important part of our greenhouse. We will try to test our individual systems as thoroughly as possible before we try to integrate all of the parts, so we can avoid finding bugs last minute.

In our schedule, we designated some slack time for next week, since we will need to prepare for the interim demo and work on the ethics assignment individually. We will also catch up on some unfinished individual work that we have next week so that we can start testing and integrating the systems the week after.

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Hiroko’s Status Report for 4/10

This week, I adjusted the watering tube to distribute water more evenly to the plants, and started adjusting the wire length of the components so that I can figure out the specific layout of the electrical components. I need to order a case to enclose the electrical components in, so I did some research and found some junction boxes on Amazon that would be suitable for our greenhouse. I also spent some time working on the ethics assignment.

I spent more time on the ethics assignment than I would’ve liked to this week, but I think I am still on schedule and ready for our demo. I plan on ordering the junction box next week and finish adjusting the wire length of all of the electrical components so that I can place everything in the junction box when it arrives. Also, I am planning on testing the sensor data accuracy/lag to make sure that our sensors meet our greenhouse requirements.

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Hiroko’s Status Report for 4/3

This week, I connected the water pumps to the relay system that I assembled last week, and measured the flow rate of the water pump. Kanon and I met up and calibrated the soil moisture sensors in order to figure out when and how long to turn the water pumps on for. I planted the pea shoot plants earlier this week, so we used the soil to test the soil moisture sensors and water pumps. We also tested communications between ESP32 and AWS by sending sensor data to AWS, using the data and user inputs from the website to determine when to turn the greenhouse components on/off, and sending the on/off commands from AWS to ESP32.

Overall, I think I am on schedule. Next week, I plan on adjusting the watering tube to distribute water more evenly to the plant, and figure out where to physically place and connect the components in the greenhouse. I will need to adjust the wire length of all of the components connected to the ESP32 and determine the specific layout of the electrical components so that I can order a case with the right dimensions to enclose the electrical components in.

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Hiroko’s Status Report for 3/27

Last week, I was able to go to the ECE lab to solder the light intensity sensor and connect it to the ESP32 board to obtain the sensor readings. Now I have all of the sensors connected to the ESP32, and can obtain all of the sensor readings. I also worked with Kanon to set up the connection between AWS IoT and ESP32, and was successfully able to send data to AWS and receive data from AWS. Also, I spent a substantial amount of time last week finishing up the design review report with my teammates.

This week, all of the components for the relay controlled outlet box arrived, so I soldered and assembled all of the parts. I also wrote Arduino code to be able to control the relays from messages received by AWS, which Kanon and I tested by actually using the website backend to remotely control the relays.

Overall, I think I am on schedule. Next week, I plan on calibrating and testing the individual components of the greenhouse and planting the pea shoot seeds so that they are ready by the interim demo. I want to measure the flow rate of the water pump, light intensity of the LED plant lights, sensitivity/accuracy of the soil moisture sensor, etc., so that Kanon can use the information to create an algorithm to determine when to turn the system on/off.

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Team Status Report for 3/13

This week, we started to work on writing the design review report, and continued implementing our subsystems. We split up sections of the report for each of us to write a draft for, and plan on meeting on Monday to edit a draft of our report.

Hiroko started to physically put the greenhouse together since she received all of her orders, and was able to upload code onto the ESP32 board to read data from the sensors.
Kanon worked on practicing for the design review presentation and setting up dynamoDB.
Sarah connected the IR-Cut camera to the Raspberry Pi, created a webcam connection to the laptop with the MicroSD card, and researched tutorials on how to perform CV analysis on live streaming images.

After receiving feedback from our design review presentation, we’ve realized that we need to figure out how to make sure that water won’t get into the electrical parts within our greenhouse. We might need to design a PCB and/or enclosing case for our electrical parts, which might alter our current design.

There is no update to our schedule, but given that we were all busy and spent a lot of time writing the design review report, we were not able to make as much progress on our individual components as we would have liked to. Next week, we plan on finishing up the design review report, and make further progress working on our individual subsystems.

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Hiroko’s Status Report for 3/13

This week I received all of the parts that we ordered, and was able to start building the physical greenhouse. I was able to put together the greenhouse shelf and connected the temperature sensor and soil moisture sensor to the ESP32 board. I also installed the Arduino IDE and the necessary sensor libraries on my laptop and was able to successfully upload some code to the ESP32 board to read the sensor readings. I haven’t touched the light intensity sensor since it needs to be soldered.

Also, we spent some time this week starting to write the design review report. I wrote the abstract, introduction, and design requirements, and currently in the process of writing the system specifications for the hardware subsystem.

Overall, I think I am on schedule, but would’ve liked to have the soldering/relay wiring done this week. I’m hoping that I can get a time slot early next week in the labs to solder/wire the relays. Once I get all of the sensors connected, I will try getting the sensor data sent to AWS over wifi. I will also be finishing up the design review report next week with my teammates.