Capstone Project
| Group | 2023-02 | Status | completed |
| Title | Garden Management System | ||
| Supervisor | C. Trueman | ||
| Description | Urban and country side gardening is a popular activity. It very important that the soil, where the plants grow, has the right amount of moisture: too dry or too wet is not good for the plants. It is difficult to identify the right amount of watering that is required to maintain optimal plant growth. Different plants “like” different soil moisture levels.
This project is about a garden watering system. In its minimal/initial configuration, the system should support four different circuits, so it could serve up to four plants with different watering requirements. It should not require daily intervention from the user. The user should only be notified of abnormalities in the system’s operation. The user should be able to get the current status of the garden any time, including upcoming maintenance tasks (see the section below). The system should be able to take water from two sources (configurable): standard water supply line, and a well or a rain water barrel. It should be operational in urban and remote areas. When configuring the system at the beginning of season, the user should be able to choose from predefined watering plans for specific plants or create his own. Once a user-defined watering plan is created, it should be available to the user as long as the user owns the system, or till the user decides that he no longer needs it. The system should be expandable to up to 10 circuits with minimum efforts from the user and at low cost. Other aspect of the system is keeping track year after year of what was growing in the garden, important dates and data (e.g. planting date, type of plant, first/last fruits collected, the amount harvested, etc.). The user should be able to analyse the data and make comparison between the years. The user should be able to predict certain important dates, e.g. the date of first fruit collection. System should give to the user hints on the garden maintenance, e.g. which fertiliser to give to which plant, when and how much. User should be able to keep record of performed maintenance. To assess environmental effect of the system, it should measure how much water was used for each type of plant, and how much it potentially saved compared to other watering methods. |
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| Student Requirement | COEN 311, 317, 352; ELEC311, 312, 346, 331. Knowledge or high motivation to learn (still requires some knowledge of fundamentals): - Analogue, digital and microcontroller circuit design and fabrication; - Microcontroller firmware design and implementation; - C/C++; - Mobile app design and development. | ||
| Tools | Standard test bench equipment (oscilloscope, DMM, power supply, FG, etc.) Soldering and re-flow stations. Samples of soil. | ||
| Number of Students | 7 | ||
| Students | O. Sanchez Lopez, M. Peralta, Y. Abdallah, G. Dolembreux, K. Mohamed, M. Mohamed, A. Zand | ||
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