Implementation

Having researched hydroponics and outlined my plans for a self regulating system, all I needed to do was to make it happen.

1 Networking

The first step of implementation was to program the microcontroller to work like I had envisioned it.
Something of note about a microcontroller is that it can act as a router of sorts, broadcasting a wireless local area network that shows up as a wifi network to join with its own cutsomisable name and network password. though one could not connect to the internet with the microcontroller, the information stored on the device could be accessed through the device’s network.

• My first step of implementation was to design a website that a user could acess data about the ideal plant ppm range in each container while being able to customize the numbers to their liking, while also getting a constant report of ppm levels in each container. This website would effectively allow the user to give the parameters for the microcontroller in order to fine tune their growing expireince.

2 Measure and Pump

• The next step was to program in some of the steps from the flow chart’s process (see Initial Design). I connected a liquid measuring device and observed that the readings it gave were vastly different from the ppm reader that had been bought to compare with it. After doing some research, I found that the value I was getting had to do with the quantizations of an ADC (analogue to digital converter).
  • basically because the microcontroller had a 16 bit ADC on it, the range of its measurements was divided into 2^12 segments, and thus the readings from the water measurements were so high.

more on ADC values here

• The readings were compared and graphed in order to find a liear equation. This equation was then used to convert the readings to ppm instead of ADC quantization, simply by plugging the input value from the measurement into an inverse equation.

• As seen in the video, microcontroller can activate a pump. This is a past prototype, which had to manually activated, but now it can activate by monitoring pmm levels, once the level of a container is below a certain amount.

3 Current Status

• through manual regulation, my exprimental hydroponic plants have flourished, yeilding more than double of what a garden plant could in the amount of time they’ve grown. From my trials, I’ve found that leafy plants like lettuce grows the most efficiently in this system, while fruiting plants still grow much more rapidly than garden plants, but need more care. This opens up many possibilities when considering how effective the process could be if done with more automation.

Below are images of fruiting plants that are currently under automated nutrient control from the controller system I have designed. Note the fruit set..