Agrocube - Blog post 1

AGROCUBE: A new way of growing plants in constrained environments

The man started earning his food by hunting at the beginning of the civilisation later he found a way to grow his food.

With the help of fire, he was able to cook that food, to make it tastier and healthier.

Now that we have evolved as one of the living which is cable of thinking on its own and take intelligent decisions,

[Irony is that we are the only animal whose brain thinks it's superior to other animals]

We are now in a stage where we have even carried out interplanetary missions to other planets and we are about to start a new habitat in Earth-like planets eg. mars etc.

But we don't have wonderful environments like earth on mars also the cost of getting something from earth to mars is too much.

  Keeping in mind all these constraints I would love to design and work on something which can solve the future problem of growing plants in a constrained environment.

The major hurdles for this are

1. Light: Inadequate amount of sunlight will result in the poor photosynthesis process

2. Air circulation: Plants will need a sufficient amount of air to grow

3. Water: Water is essential for the growth of plants as it helps the plant to take nutrients from the ground

4. Space: There should be adequate space for the plant to grow so that it can acquire the essentials such as air and light

How we are going to solve these hurdles:

1. Light: By artificially illuminating the environment with a controlled LED lighting system we can provide adequate light and even the required spectrum for the particular plant.

2. Air: By supplying external air by using some intelligent air recirculation methodology we can fulfil the requirement of

growing plants

3. Water: Drip irrigation method for supplying water to the plants has been found as a best practice to save water ad provide necessary nutrients to grow.

Another best way to save and recycle water is to use the hydroponics method to grow plants

4. Space: With the help of efficient design practice we can build a method to either use an array-like structure one on top of other or like the vertical hanging garden with hydroponics

These are my simple scribbles about the design

Control:

OK. How do we control this?

The basic control loop we will be using is feedback based closed-loop control system. The advantage here is the use of PiHAT Automation kit PIM487 and  PIM486 sensor units.

The feature which makes it different from the existing control system the use of TinyML to control the water, air and light flow on the plants. With the help of edge impulse,

we will train a model and it will help us to accurately predict the plant's health and act on it. The environmental sensors will help us to accurately measure the data and the display on the shield will help us to show the health and vital information on the screen. The relay in the automation unit will help us to turn on and off the water supply, lights etc. Since the resource is limited it is essential for us to utilise it in a careful and concerned manner.

These are all about my Idea and how I will be utilising the hardware to build something that is useful in future.