Agriculture uses 80% of the water in the U.S. But droughts and heatwaves cause a 10% drop in annual crop harvests. Pests such as birds cause another 10-16% loss.
Our vision is to save water, energy and labor by minimizing crop damage due to excessive heat and pests. Our solution uses Intel Edison, AWS and a variety of sensors.
Step 1: Set up your Intel Edison with Arduino expansion board.
Step 2: Attach the shield from the Grove kit.
Step 3: Attach the sensors:
- D2 -- PIR motion sensor
- D3 -- servo
- D6 -- relay
- D7 -- buzzer
- I2C -- RGB LCD
- A0 -- temperature
- A1 -- moisture
Step 4: Set up the water pump.
- Connect the red wire from the pump to either one of the relay's J1 ports.
- Connect a short piece of red wire from the relay's other J1 port to the positive terminal of the power connector.
- Connect the black wire from the pump to the negative terminal of the power connector.
- Attach a 12V power supply to the power connector.
- Attach vinyl tubing to the inlet and outlet tubes of the water pump.
Step 5: Assemble the servo/shade cloth contraption.
- Take an 20”x20”x20" box and cut out most of the top and front, leaving about 2” along the edge.
- Cut out a small opening in the top front of the box to fit the servo.
- Attach a plastic cup to the servo from the inside of the box. This will serve as a pulley.
- Use a sheet of paper as the shade cloth.
- Attach string to one end of the paper.
- Tie the other end of the string to the plastic cup.
- Attach string to the top inside of the box, from the front corner to the rear corner, to hold the paper in place.
Step 6: Load the Arduino sketch.
Step 7: Run it.
- Put two plants in the box, one with dry soil and one with moist soil.
- Place the outlet tubing from the water pump in the pot with dry soil.
- Fill a small bottle with water for use by the water pump.
- Cover up the motion sensor so that it’s not constantly triggered.
- Insert the moisture sensor in the wet soil. Nothing happens. Transfer the sensor into the dry soil. The water pump should turn on to water the plant (drip irrigation).
- Observe the temperature displayed on the LCD.
- Take the temperature sensor and breathe on it to warm it up. When it reaches the first temperature threshold (see code), the servo will pull the shade cloth across the top of the box.
- Attach the outlet tubing to the top of the box.
- Breathe on the temperature sensor again. When it reaches the second temperature threshold (see code), the water pump will turn on for overhead watering/misting.
- Uncover the motion detector and wave your hand. The buzzer will go off and the built-in LED light on the board will flash.
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