Plant Problem Project: Using a Moisture Sensor to detect hydration levels in a plant

     This project was based around using a moisture sensor to detect water levels in a plant pot, and using the outputted moisture levels to turn a LED on correctly based on the said water level.



The three LED's used were the Red, Yellow, and Green. Red was a critical water level signal, at 1/3 and below moisture level. Yellow is the warning light, between 1/3 and 2/3 moisture level. Green is ok water level, and 2/3 and above moisture level. The Moisture sensor is the first sensor in this series that is not from the base Arduino kit, and is something that had to be sourced externally, through Amazon.


The project was simple to make, and didn't require much on the hardware engineering side. I plugged the input side of the LED's into the D2, D3, and D4 pins for the Red, Yellow, and Green LED's respectively. I also plugged them into ground as-well. The moisture sensor required three inputs to function. One is the standard ground, the VCC is connected to the D8 pin, and the Signal output pin is connected to the A0 pin, so that way we can output an analog result to the code.


The code was based around decoding the analog output from the moisture sensor, and then turning on the appropriate LED for each. The code loops the current value of the moisture sensor, and determines if it exceeds or falls below the threshold for the LED's, and will turn them on accordingly. I used this youtube video below to help with the programming of this project, and as a guide for when things went wrong.

Link to Video



This project was a great starting off point for the future projects for this class. I learned how to use the moisture sensor for the Arduino, and how to apply it to make understanding your plants current health easier. I had very little trouble with this project, except for figuring out how to dry out my "plant pot" to demonstrate the project.



Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

IGME 480 Final Project Post: Road Shadows

Image
     Project name: Road Shadows     Project members: Maxwell Sigrest     For my performance, I plan to let my video play, while I explain some of the technical choices behind what I did. I will explain the cache, edge and difference TOPs, how they work and how I implemented them into my work. I will show how the audio capture works, showing how notes of the same volume but different ranges effect the circle and edge movement.     My aesthetic is very calming and reminscient, made to make you remember 50 degree nights on the easy coast. The cars driving by and the trees, with the dusk background and there to make you remember summer nights and long car rides. The "shadows" are made by comparing frames between the video and boosting the brightness with a level. There is also audio capture, with it capturing low bass and middle notes, each effecting two different parts. The bass makes the circle in the center grow, and the middle notes effect th...
Read more

P1 Completed Project Post

Image
     Car crashes are never a good thing, and can put someone into serious harm or financial trouble. And while Manhattan is known for its skylines and beautiful attractions, they busy streets can cause a lot of car accidents. I wanted my visual to remind people to drive more carefully, be more aware of your surroundings, and to always make sure your are driving to the best of your ability. You can move the slider in the window to change the date of information. The information changing is the number of car accidents that happened in Manhattan on that certain day, and that is conveyed both with the number and the bar that moves. I started with a single container, with a slider inside. The slider will make the interactivity, with the container background showing all the visuals. The slider connects to a panel chop, which connects to two different math chops. One math chop changes the slider for the x-position, and the second one changes the slider range for the date-to-cras...
Read more

P1 Planning Blog Post

Image
My data source is the Motor Vehicle Collision - Crashes data source from data.gov. This tracks motor vehicle collisions in NYC https://catalog.data.gov/dataset/motor-vehicle-collisions-crashes I will show the different types of collisions, results, and causes in a chart that can meaningfully show and tell the user about the likely hood and incident types and results. I would like to provide my data as a pie charts with different types of wheels as individual sections, or perhaps as different size cars in a bar chart. I will have a time slider where you can move it and data will change as time increases. Car accidents are no joke, and the outcomes are always never positive. My mood will be a gloomy one, with dark tones and colors, non-vibrant colors, and information and text that brings the user right to the point.
Read more