Cornichon

There was inspiration to build this product because of the difficult nature of growing produce and the limited space people have in their homes. The project was first intended to grow herbs to help increase the life span of them. The project is a domestic watering system contained in a pot that will assist people to either grow their own produce or house plants. It will be made so it is quickly and easily set up to reduce the hassle for the user. The watering system is encased in the pot and it is designed to be a product that is bought off the shelf so the user can just pot their plant of choice. In the prototype’s current iteration, moisture is detected by the sensor and this information is passed to the script. If moisture isn’t detected, the water pump will water the plant until there is water detected. When this happens, the water pump will be turned off.
The product has been built by following a tutorial online closely but making the appropriate changes that were decided on that would improve the product both aesthetically and functionally. The required parts were bought also following the tutorial. There are still further changes that can be made in building the product, moving away from the original tutorial. There was a tutorial for a similar self-watering pot system using a Raspberry Pi. It was thought that the product could be improved and made into a more consumer friendly product. There was research completed online on how the project worked and also how the accompanying technology would work with the product.
There was a learning process involved with using the Raspberry Pi with both the wiring and the programming. The OS was installed on the Raspberry Pi and research was conducted on the GPIO pins worked with the different components of the product. The wiring wasn’t too difficult to learn, the tutorial was a helpful guide. The process of learning how to code with python was difficult, much harder than originally anticipated.
The moisture sensor was set up as a test first – to see if water was present or not. A program was created using Python that detected if the sensor worked giving back a 1 or 0 to the Raspberry Pi on the console window. When the test was found to be successful, the program was changed to be the final product. This was finished in three days, the process taking longer than expected.
The project went smoothly for the most part, there were a couple of minor hiccups. Including a minor electrocution while the product was being made. This was an error by the manufacturer of part that was used and there is no possibility of this happening to the end user.
A 3D printed case to house the electronics of the watering system would be made to help improve the aesthetics of our current prototype. It would be attached to the side of the pot. The case could also be made with an openable lid so the user can adjust and look at the wires / electronics. Another change for aesthetic reasons would be to build the water tubing into the top lip of the pot to hide it.
Another future implementation would be to create an interface so the user can check on their plants remotely. HTML would be the language used to program the interface. There could also be an option to make a web monitoring system, connecting a camera or a webcam so the user can see their plants and not just the water level in the soil.
There are many possible changes for future versions of the product. There could be a version of the pot that has a touch screen on the side of the pot with different options to help the user control and customise the moisture levels of their plants. This customisation would help to increase the range of plants that would be compatible with the pot, not limiting the user to plants that constantly need the soil wet, which is the only option that the water system has at the moment. The screen that would be built into the pot would have to be a small screen, but not too small as it wouldn’t be worth having. If the pot was larger to house a larger screen, it would decrease the feasibility of the product appealing to a domestic consumer, which is the target demographic. A bigger screen would also incur a larger price which would increase the end price for the consumer.
There are plans for improving the product including making the software more aware of the amount of liquid that is present in the soil, so the plant receives the amount of water it needs, rather than watering the soil every time the soil is dry. Adding a humidity sensor that is linked to a humidifier would help to understand of the plant needed any moisture regulation.
The product will help with the issue of watering the plant, but the user will have to deal with diseases the plant contracts and the consequences of insects eating their plant. The product doesn’t have any plans to prevent these problems.
The reference that was used to help build the product used a different moisture sensor to the one that was used in the project. Research was made to learn the basics of how to connect “things” to the Raspberry Pi which was done by watching multiple videos and looking at other tutorials. From this information, the way that the GPIO pins worked on the Raspberry Pi. The GPIO pins had been implemented into python code so values could be both read and written from the moisture sensor.
Bought a different one and could change the moisture sensor to detect the percentage of the water moistness. The one in the example had a scale for the moisture level, so it could be accurately measured. It doesn’t impact the overall performance of the product; it just isn’t as accurate as it could be. This can be changed in the future.
Moisture sensor was originally created to be used in conjunction with the Arduino, there was a possibility to have to buy another model that was compatible with the raspberry pi. Got the moisture sensor to work with the raspberry pi, no documentation available to make it compatible with the raspberry pi. Overcame this problem by spending a week doing research on how the moisture sensor and the raspberry pi worked.
Changes were made in the way the water pumped into the plant with a sprinkler design compared to the reference that was found online. In the tutorial, only a single water outlet was used, there was a modification from this plan, however, to create a sprinkler design so the water could be distributed around the pot and the plant evenly. There is a problem with the water covering a larger area of the pot, the pot will have to be designed so the wiring of the system doesn’t come into contact with the water. A possible way to combat this issue would be to put heat shrink on the electrical component of the sensor.
Another change to the product that will help the functionality of the system would be to change the way the water enters the pot. It would be changed to have multiple entry holes around the base of the pot for the water so the plant is evenly watered.