High-Level Project Summary
We developed a reliable and resource-efficient plant-growing system, that provides water and nutrients to the their roots by mist in the air inside a watertight, dark and enclosed space. The system itself can be stowed away or resized thanks to its modular structure.The upper parts of the plants are openly accessible and visible for anyone, which also carries the benefit of converting CO2 to O2, and allows for easier monitoring and harvesting of the crops.This falls under horticulture, which is an industry covering fruit growing, viticulture, ornamental and medicinal plants. Aeroponics is based on optimizing food production with reduced consumption of water, fertilizers and space.
Link to Project "Demo"
Link to Final Project
Detailed Project Description
The Aeroponics system itself serves to provide a resource-efficient way to grow crops, due to the plants roots absorbing water and nutrients more effectively through a very fine mist. This is provided to them inside the "root chamber", which is a dark, enclosed space, housing their roots. The system doesn't need to rely on gravity for its operation thanks to that.
One thing to keep in mind for this type of plant-growing system is, that different plants require a different among of water, nutrients, and light. This has to be set manually set the parameters for the controller at the moment, but could be automated with the help of AI, by teaching it how to use the machine and use the provided data from the sensors to determine what actions need to take place to get the best results, and additional actuators.
The system lighting consists of Aquarium lights, due to its light spectrum being more suitable for the plants, which results in more effective photosynthesis.
The expected system mass and stowage volume is 4 kg and 0,25 m^3.
The program of the controller was developed in Python version 3.6 for the Raspberry Pi 3, while the control interface is a dynamic single-page website using HTML, CSS and JavaScript.
The website is supplied by the server of Tornado (which is a Python 3 web framework library, obtained using PIP), and data is exchanged with WebSockets, using the JSON format. The website (located at "http://<device ip address>:2000") is mean't to be accessed locally, for security purposes.
The website provides the user a simple-to-use graphical interface, that can be accessed by most modern web browsers (like Mozilla Firefox and Chrome) and is used to give the controller commands and read its current state. Alternatively, the same can also be done with other programming tools that support WebSockets by creating a connection with them to address "http://<device ip address>:2000/data_exchange".
The controller controls the pump and lights (all three powered by mains voltage) of the Aeroponics system using relays.
To send a command to a controller, the user first needs to establish a connection to the WebSocket server of it. Once that is done, commands can be send, or the state of the controller read.
Space Agency Data
Our main inspiration was a system, which offered a way to effectively produce vegetables in space.
The use of recycled materials from human waste was one such inspiration towards the end result of the project, due to trying to maximize the use of the provided resources.
The use of automation of food production also inspired the idea of increasing food production efficiency using automated processes with specialized machines.
Hackathon Journey
We researched this type of crop-growing system a few years back, and when viewing the needs of growing crops in space from this Space Challenge, the pieces have fallen in place, and we hope the presented solution proves to be a fitting one.
References
Programming tools:
- Notepad++ for creating the website (HTML, CSS, JavaScript).
- PyScripter for creating the controller program.
- Python v3.6 intepreter for X86_64 (for PC development) and ARMv7 (for the Raspberry Pi 3 Model B+) instruction sets.
- Tornado web framework for its HTTP and WebSocket server.
Hardware:
- HMS203H mist maker.
- Raspberry Pi 3 Model B+ for controlling the pump and lights.
- Aquarium lights
Tags
#water, #air, #aeroponics, #crops, #mist, #plants, #python3, #water, #nutrients
Global Judging
This project has been submitted for consideration during the Judging process.