I am happy to announce today's Winners of the 1 Meter of Pi with Raspberry Pi Design Challenge!
After 20+ weeks of designing, researching, prototyping, coding, and testing, with 94 Blog posts and 46 Videos created, the 1 Meter of Pi Design Challenge has come to a close. Our challengers were tasked to use the Raspberry Pi to feed their spaceship crew as it blasts through the stars, with only 1M³ of growing space available.
The judges have rounded up their thoughts on the projects, and selected their favorites!
Kit used
| The Kit Buy Kit*Buy Kit* | The Specs |
|---|---|
Raspberry Pi 4 2GB
Buy NowBuy Now |
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| PIM487 Automation HAT Mini
Buy NowBuy Now |
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PIM486Enviro HAT for Raspberry Pi
Buy NowBuy Now |
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PIM300PICO HAT Hacker
Buy NowBuy Now |
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Prizes
| Prize | Prize Category |
|---|---|
 | Grand Prizes* |
 | Runner up* |
 | Finisher Prize For anyone who completes 10 Blogs and a project with the featured product.
|
*Or local equivalent
Winners of the 1 Meter of Pi Design Challenge
Grand Prize
feiticeir0 – Space Vegetables
This project integrated Twitter, timelapses, and the Raspberry Pi camera to create a very effective hydroponic setup, making this garden up as one of the most fruitful. Also, I am a sucker for a good logo 
. Check out the Twitter feed here: https://twitter.com/VegetablesSpace
So congratulations to feiticeir0 and his Space Vegetables!
Read Feiticeir0's Blogs here
1 Meter of Pi
Runner Up
milosrasic98 – Robot Assisted Garden AKA R.A.G
This was an amazing multidisciplinary project for one person to create, featuring a Nanny robot arm to tend to the plants within the enclosure, with 3D printed parts, Interchangeable tooling, a watering robot, all controlled elegantly within on GUI, powered by Pi! Milos never got to grow any plants in his garden, but the amount of work he did in such a short amount of time has been mindblowing.
Milos also included many sketches and designs for features he will continue to work on, expanding the project as time goes by.
Read Milos's Blogs here
Finishers
These projects won't be winning the top spot prizes, but we loved their work so much that we wanted to publicize their amazing efforts.
amgalbu - Project Gr0G
https://www.element14.com/community/community/design-challenges/1-meter-of-pi/blog/authors/amgalbu
This build had room for plants on all surfaces, was self contained, had a great enclosure, along with a high pressure spray system.
Great environmental monitoring was built in, with a local access panel and a BLE Interface for controlling the pumps. It also unfolds easily for servicing.
If I had one more slot for a winner, this certainly would have been it!
gam3t3ch - Valley Forge Project Paperiniki
Valley Forge: Project Paperinik #1 (Welcome)
Wesleys fully working garden uses watering hoses, optimized grow LEDs for a very effective grow. Wes also used off the shelf conduit and individually 3D printed connectors and joints.
On top of the initial build, this project comes with hours of engaging video and a real close up look at the ins and outs of this project. One thing we really liked is that along with the relay systems Wesley also included fusing to manage any over current issues. Wesley used Tarrarium Pi as the dashboard for this Raspberry Pi Powered system. He fought through leaks and other bugs to produce a wonderful project which really did fruit!
ilvyanyatka – Mushrooms Paradise
A paradise for mushrooms! Utilizing an automated light, humidifier, and a set of fans, with online reporting using ThingSpeak.
All built within a pre-made insulated enclosure (a repurposed refrigerator, so a nice addition of upcycling to the project!).
jduchniewicz – Envidrawer
An under bed grow solution, built to take advantage of wasted space under the bed. The drawer remains closed until required, and open itself using motors during the day time to maximize light usage. I did have concerns about … quite literally.. wetting the bed. But it also had good basic environmental monitoring. There was also novel use of distance sensors that are often used in 3D printers. Although I am not entirely sure the total volume is under 1m3, the drawer is shallow enough to be given benefit of the doubt with this space saving project.
kurama007 – 2Pi Microgravity Garden
https://www.element14.com/community/community/design-challenges/1-meter-of-pi/blog/authors/kurama007
A smart and effective hydroponic setup with some really nice features! Satoshi worked to tackle Self Pollinating Plants, Bug catching (sarracenia), and a closed loop water system, as well as gifting their garden with AI computer vision using Tensor Flow. This project has already featured in another Design Challenge, but the natural improvement and continuation of it has earned it a position as a Finisher.
Hugo has built a simple but effective garden with Timed lighting and Watering features. I do worry that the LEDs chosen will not give the best results when growing plants, and that it is ... fairly tall in relation to the challenge brief. But it does feature all the fundamentals for life, and uses the components provided, so well done!
rockcacti – The Space Salad System
https://www.element14.com/community/community/design-challenges/1-meter-of-pi/blog/authors/rockcacti
Anthony set up an closure, lighting, monitoring, and was even successful enough to grow radishes and lettuce in his garden. He also detailed issues and fixes when working with two competing Raspberry Pi HATs.
Anthony's Lettuce!
skruglewicz - EAS
Edible Algae System - (Growing Spirulina in space)
A fantastic and data-led project, this is the first of the challenge projects to grow Spirulina instead of leafy plants. I really think this is the future of foods!
This project might not be as visually rich as some of the others in the challenge, but the data and work speak for themselves!
stevotech - Modular water distribution system.
https://www.element14.com/community/community/design-challenges/1-meter-of-pi/blog/authors/stevotech
Ian created a wonderful mechanism that pressurizes and atomizes the water source in the bottom of the container; this system then equally distributes water across the multiple levels of the grow enclosure.
A new a novel method of watering, which I found very exciting!
Ujjval used MQTT and an ESP8266 to make their sensors wireless and created the grow enclosure with controlled RGB grow lights.
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