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Major review for the prototype system v0.1
09/12/2020 at 14:35 • 0 commentsWith my working during the intensive week, I have completed the prototype system with the following features:
- Ebb and flow hydroponic system with peristaltic pump
- RGBW lighting with SK6812 chips and custom made PCB
- Air, power delivery and wiring
- Sensors (ambient temperature and humidity, water temperature)
- Cooling unit to test the electronics choices
- MQTT system with EC2 server with custom domain
- MQTT msg handling with node-red
- Smart phone dashboard with MQTT Dash
- PC dashboard with node-red dashboard
Deployment environment photo also updated in the project.
During the two weeks of evaluation , a few issues pop out and forced me to stop the testing. A list of issues are stated below
- The LED tends to heat up quite hot. Thermal management should be in place to extend the life of LED panel
- The peristaltic pump form black particular in the rotation parts and possible damage of rolling parts. The speed of peristaltic pump should be reduce
- The planter have serious grow of algae and rusting occur. Plastic planter will be explore in the coming version
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Know your hardware
08/17/2020 at 09:34 • 0 commentsIn order to address all the feature required for the food computer(FC), it is important to choose the right hardware to power. One of the major component is controller for the food computer. As someone familiar with electronics, both embedded system (Raspberry Pi) and Micro-Controlling Unit (MCU) (Arduino/ESP32/ESP8266/SAMD21/etc,) are consider under the initial design. I would like to explain reason of choice behind.
---------- more ----------Embedded System (Raspberry PI)
An embedded system according to my understand is something run with OS with medium amount of computing resources. Technically, you may state ESP32 or something similar are embedded system but here, I will use Raspberry Pi as an example. With Linux based system, these system are able to process complex information such as video and images with the possibility of AI. However, the hardware support for those boards are little. In the case of Raspberry Pi, the control of General Purpose Input Output(GPIO) pin required CPU time which cause slow GPIO control. In the scope of FC, such powerful feature are not implemented in the early stage so other options are selected. The Pi HAT also seldom allow stacking which limit the flexibility of hardware development with multiple functions.
MCU (ESP32)
MCU nowadays are powerful. With the acceleration in Internet of Things (IoT), the connectivity of MCU are greatly improved. In the case of ESP32, both Wi-Fi and Bluetooth Low Energy(BLE) are included. The Arduino core of ESP32 with platform.io also provided a Integrated Development Environment (IDE) for development. The great amount of shield also allow great expand-ability for different features. Therefore, ESP32 are chosen.
To reduce the development time, a esp32 with arduino form factor board is used. As the pin mapping are not the same as arduino, certain library pin assignment may need modify. A schematic is attached for reference as well as the pin assignment for current project in excel.
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Intensive week
08/11/2020 at 04:04 • 0 commentsOther stuff from my life definitely toke me more time than this project. However, I have got my block leave for a whole week and finally can focus on this project to make it work in some way. I also did some ground works for the mini-version of AgriFuture Food Computer ad will share you guy in the coming week. Stay in touch!
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Conclude the past
12/14/2019 at 12:11 • 0 commentsIt been a month from my last log, I should update the project more frequently. Working in full-time is tough enough which makes me very hard to find time to balance my work and this project. Nevertheless, I still want to report what we learn from last year.
The picture we show on the page is the prototype from last year. We toke a very huge step to build a rack prototype for "industrial" scale. Although the number of plant head may reach the standard, the build quality definite not. Here are the problems:
- Planter water leakage problem with NFT technology
- End cap cannot secure well to be water proof
- LED not water proof
- Wires everywhere without proper planning
- Algae buildup without proper management
Those problem keep us from fixing problem instead of developing something useful. As our project period end (end of semester), we abandon the previous prototype and pause the development to rethink the next step.
Here we come to today and a smaller scale prototype are being develop. Hope I can have more time in Christmas and work on both prototype and log to catch up with this project.
- Planter water leakage problem with NFT technology
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Starting from Scratch
11/16/2019 at 15:31 • 0 commentsIt's been a while for updating our system progress. As graduating from college and working full time as an electrical engineer, our team has less time working on the system and only able to develop the system as hobby. Our demo system during one year of operation and maintenance also encounter multiple major break point which led to a redesign of system is needed (more on that story later). Currently, we are working on a smaller system which is easier to maintain and rapid prototype. Stay tune on upcoming log and hope the small scale prototype work as charm.
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Choose right system
06/13/2018 at 07:36 • 0 commentsHydroponics means planting with water instead of soil. There are several system available for use and most of them do have their advantage and disadvantage, Is the update, let's discuss more about the different type of system and choose one to move on for this project.
---------- more ----------This video from uponics provide the basic intro for different system. All system do come with their pros and cons. In our system, we focus on Flood and Drain system which enable the system for wider variety of crops. Besides, the pumping in this system will not be over complicated and can be adopt either home growing or industrial scale.
Compare to MIT OpenAG Personal Food Computer, the Flood Drain system reduce the use of air pump and reduce the chance of rotting root for plants. The movement of water also create a better environment for microbe and foster the growing environment for plants.
Instead of traditional PVC based planter, we want to make our system more stylish and modern. Therefore, we adopt aluminium tubing such as 8080 aluminium wire tube. Those tube have the large cross section area with accommodate strong root plant and large plant. Also we would like to take advantage of the cooling capability of aluminium for LED lighting, more on that later.
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Starting from the beginning
06/13/2018 at 06:10 • 0 commentsNowadays, there's a lot of hydroponics system available in the market. With the development in technologies and increase in human laziness, such system getting more available and popular. However, current system still suffer from quite a few problems. In this update, I would like to use MIT OpneAG Personal Food Computer as a basis and discuss some of the disadvantage of such system. I would also suggest some directions to improve on existing architectures and setup an experimental testing unit in Hong Kong.
---------- more ----------According to their website, "The OpenAg™ Personal Food Computer is a tabletop-sized, controlled environment agriculture technology platform that uses robotic systems to control and monitor climate, energy, and plant growth inside of a specialized growing chamber."(Direct quote form the website). Although doing amazing job on building such hardware and opensource it on the web page, MIT OpenAg at the Media Lab has paused research on these versions. I attached the link below:
https://wiki.openag.media.mit.edu/personal_food_computers
https://forum.openag.media.mit.edu/t/update-from-openag-please-read/3171
This research focus shift makes me feel sad and inspire to implement a newer version of food computer aimed being cheaper, modular and easier to build. The potential features are listed as below:
- Water circulation for Hydroponics
- Water condition monitoring (pH, Temperature, Electrical Conductivity)
- Ambient Temperature monitoring and control
- Auto dosing system (nutrient and pH control)
- Centralized and remote control capability
With reference to OpenAG PFC, a few possible improvement are listed below and will study in the follow post:
- Planter and water circulation
- Dosing system
- Power supply system
- HVAC
- Computer system
- Potential Air containment
With all the things in place, it's time for planning ahead and start working!!