Week 1: Getting Started

After most of the parts came in and an informative talk from the teaching team, we decided to get started on a few preliminary things: version control, an initial firmware framework, sensor validation, reaching out to WatiMake for 3D printing assistance, and website design.

Software and Electrical

From the software viewpoint a means of version control was implemented to allow for better collaboration between team members on the project's code. Making use of the free Gitlab accounts we get from the university, this was done with ease! A quick look at our repo can be seen here: Automated Plant Monitoring System Repository

Once done, the team was able to easily comment on and share code including the initial firmware template created with the help from an open source Finite State Machine framework. The initial firmware template would be the skeleton of our project, and was easily created based on the flowchart designed at the end of last term (seen below).

With this set in place, some basic sensor validation was done using the components that had arrived as well as some parts the team already had. Validation of the ultrasonic sensors, light sensors and moisture sensor was performed using the selected Arduino Mega 2560 from last year. Below are a few short snippets showcasing some sensor validation done by the team. The validation performed runs some basic code to setup the sensors and poll data from it. This basic framework can easily be integrated into our state machine and be used as a starting point for much of the sensor development.

Furthermore, from the videos it can be seen that all the sensors work as expected. The ultrasonic and moisture sensors produce very consistent results regardless of the location, however some more finer tunings need to be done for the light sensors, as lighting conditions seem to affect the sensor greatly. More research and testing will be performed using the same code, but in different environments for the light sensors.

Mechanical

To get a head start onto the mechanical aspect of our project, we reached out to Watimake to help with 3D printing our parts. Estimated costs were around ~$80 after consultation which is much lower than we anticipated (woot woot)! Furthermore, after more discussion with the Watimake team, we discovered that additional training was needed for printing our parts. Due to the COVID-19 restrictions, the earliest date we could go in to do training was sometime next week, so any additional mechanical work was put on hold until then.

Other

Finally, this week we started the basics of our website by using the third-party editor Wix! We were able to write out a couple of blog posts to keep track of our progress so far, as well as get a good framework out for what we hope our peers, professors and potential stakeholders would see.