Abstract • The Smart Plant Caring System has investigated the urban gardening technology by developing a smart device that automate the process of taking cares of a plant that any end-user could effortlessly utilise to participate in urban gardening in urban areas. • The project consists of two aims, the first aim is to build a prototype Smart Plant Caring System to prove the concept of plant caring automation and the second aim is to develop a web dashboard application to visualise all the collected data to allow a user to analyse and learn the trends and patterns of the data. • The project has utilised several tools available today, such as MQTT, Telegraf and InfluxDB, along with the use of hardware, such as microcontroller, sensors and actuators, to implement and achieve the overall functionalities of the system. • In conclusion, the project aims setup has been successfully addressed by implementing the Smart Plant Caring System that any users could use if they wish to take part in practising urban gardening. However, an improvement could still be made in the future by applying techniques such as Artificial Intelligence to make the future of the Smart Plant Caring System (SPCS) brighter.
Project Detail – Smart Plant Caring System •
The Smart Plant Caring System is a smart device that adopted the Internet of Things technology to automate the process of taking cares of a plant to prove the concept of plant caring automation system in the area of Urban Gardening technology.
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It is used to detect moisture level of the soil • If the soil is dry – Start the watering process • If the soil is wet – Continue collecting soil moisture data
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It collects several data through the combination of sensor and Internet of Things (IoT) • Soil Moisture • Temperature • Light Intensity • Humidity
Project Detail – Research Inspiration
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The rise of Urban Gardening Technologies trend in various countries such as United Kingdom, Singapore, Hong Kong and more.
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Urban Gardening is essential to be practice in many countries because it significantly assists countries such as Singapore in resolving the plantation problems which has been causing them to heavily reliant on overseas suppliers (Moss, 2021).
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Personal experience with overwatering plants.
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Not only wasting water, but it cause potential harm to the plant as it will drown the plants because they cannot absorb oxygen normally from their roots which is considerably fatal to the plant (Garden, 2021).
MOSS, D. 2021. Can 1% of Singapore's Land Feed Its Population? [Online]. Bloomberg Opinion. Available at: https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2021-04-29/singapore-s-investment-in-urban-farming-isn-t-just-trendy (Accessed 12 October 2021). GARDEN, M. B. 2021. Overwatering [Online]. Missouri Botanical Garden. Available: https://bit.ly/3n0Qkps [Accessed 16 October 2021].
Project Detail – Implementation •
The system has been implemented to handle and visualizing the collected sensor data. The product has implemented to first collecting all the data from the integrated sensors through the microcontroller and publish them into MQTT protocol.
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The system has then implemented to retrieve all the published data and upload it into InfluxDB, a time series database.
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All the data is then retrieved from the database and visualise on the dashboard through PHP implemented on the web dashboard.
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On the other hand, the physical set up will automate the watering process and toggle the UV light by retrieving the data from the MQTT protocol and when it detects a certain condition, it will start the watering process or toggle the UV light.
Project Result – Physical Setup •
The physical setup is where the plant caring process took place
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It has been installed with various sensors and actuators to allowed the process of data collection and automating plant watering process.
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The physical setup has also integrated with a NodeMCU ESP8266 microprocessor as the central point to interact with various sensors and actuators and handling the process of uploading data.
Project Aim 1 “To build a prototype Smart Plant Caring System to prove the concept of plant caring automation”
Project Result – Dashboard •
The web dashboard is where the system visualize all the collected data along with some additional features enables user to study plant data patterns and make decisions rapidly without requiring an extensive amount of time.
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The web dashboard has been created using the PHP as the back-end programming language and jQuery as the front-end programming language
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The web dashboard has adopted the use of images such as traffic light faces to visualise all the data collected.
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Additional functionalities included: • Plant Information Customisation • Weather Forecast • View Raw Data • Manual UV Light Toggling
Project Aim 2 “To develop a web dashboard application to visualize all the collected data to allow a user to analyze and learn the trends and patterns of the data.”
Conclusion •
Two things have been implemented in the Smart Plant Caring System • Physical Set Up • Web Dashboard
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It has shown that the Smart Plant Caring System has a huge potential in the urban gardening area with the adoption of Internet of Things technology.
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The Smart Plant Caring System has been implemented to give users a better and easy to learn way to participate Urban Gardening in urban areas.
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Several technical skills have been developed during the project timeframe, which including: • The fundamental on how to build an IoT system • How to enhance IoT security • Following a good IoT Dashboard Design • Time Management • And etc.
Conclusion – Future Direction of the SPCS • The project has been set to investigate the combination of Artificial Intelligence and Internet of Things (AIoT) to bring more advanced functionalities using Machine Learning or Deep Learning algorithms such as: • Advanced Smart Irrigation • Plant Disease Identification • Pests Identification
• To enable an opportunity to make the future of the SPCS system brighter with the support of Artificial Intelligence