Team:Newcastle/Developments
Sensors
Adding multiple sensors is a good way to collect a range of data for analysis purposes. Such as; Humidity, temperature, CO^2, PH level sensors. Which would allow for a greater control over the subject plant, in our case Arabidopsis. Which however would lead into a problem with memory. Currently the system is run by a Arduino Uno which has Flash Memory 32 KB of which 0.5 KB used by, bootloader, SRAM 2 KB, EEPROM 1 KB. With the Lux sensor 80% of the flash memory is already taken.
Figure 1.0; Schematic of a standard USB cable.
Figure 1.1; Above is 4 exposed wires. Red is power, black is ground, and the white and green wires are the data lines.
Figure 1.2; Schematic demonstrating how to power the Arduino and the LED's
ROUGHLY
AMPS ARE PULLED
FOR THE WHOLE SYSTEM
APPROXIMATELY
KWH OF POWER ANNUALLY
USED TO POWER SYSTEM
PROVIDES UP TO
LUX OF LIGHT
TO GROW SEEDS
CONTAINS
INDIVIDUALLY ADDRESSABLE
LOW-POWER LED'S
Data Storage
In order to store data from the system the arduino needs a host shield. The ‘Mini Micro 3.3V’ would be suitable and there are plenty of forums online detailing the application of this device. [1]
With a memory stick attached, the system can record the data every hour. Later this can then downloaded onto a laptop and plotted showing if there are any fluctuations. Unfortunately this means we have to upgrade the Arduino model so we have enough memory to store the code for the extra sensors and the USB stick. There are a number of models that have more storage, Arduino Due has 512 KB flash memory and 96 KB SRAM. Which is more than enough for our project.
The engineers, hard at work trying to troubleshoot issues with the system.
The finished product, set to a rainbow function that cycles through various wavelengths of light