Azalea Lovato

Jaideen Cobb
Kevin Diaz
Cap Stone I
April 30th 2019

Personalized Smart Garden Documentation

The development of the Personalized Smart Garden prototype was centered

around social change. The social epidemic our system addresses is food equity and
food deserts. Initially, as a team we had a long list of ideas we had on how to solve this
social problem. As a result, we picked something for our project that also created
awareness around food education.Each one of us has a personal story of why food was
an important topic to address for us and from there, we bounced around ideas on how
to make a project that would best represent and bring awareness to food equity. As we
conducted research we found that there are individuals and families who live or are
affected by food deserts including: students who are in college, low income
communities. With this knowledge, throughout the designing process we realized that
many people don’t have access to healthy food grocery stores and unhealthier options
are more accessible in the area. Also there is a huge gap in food education throughout
these underserved areas. As a result, we asked ourselves how we can best educate
and give access to food for folks to eat more healthier to be able to live a more fulfilling
and healthy life.addressing food access and the application is a way to access
information around food education. Both parts of the project go hand in hand to educate
and give access to healthier food options.
The Personalized Smart Garden project is composed of two parts: a physical
system and an application. The Personalized Smart Garden’s, physical component is a
unique design from multiple inspirations. One piece of inspiration we pulled from is
automation, the idea of having a totally autonomous self sustaining garden would help
users maintain their health and their system ​(Erin Winick). The goal of the physical
system is to be small enough for most people to maintain three different plants. The
idea of maintaining plants in the smallest confined space required additional research
on thee types of plants that can be grown within the gardening system. According to our
research plants such as parsley, tomatoes, carrots, basely and lettuce would do great in
smaller pods ​(​Tower Garden​).​Growing three plants in separate buckets, allows for a
very flexible setup that can be expanded on in the future. We also built our system
around the mechanics of a traditional dip system model which is a simple gardening
concept that can be easy to assemble for most users(Max).​ In addition, we have to
learn different techniques of maintaining plants within a small system. For example, we
had to take into account things such as water levels, sunlight and when to harvest the
plants individually​(​Greatist).
The project was broken down into three sections to focus on, with each of us
having a section to lead according to our skill. Jaideen Cobb had the focus of leading
the fabrication process of the physical component which was the smart garden. Azalea
Lovato had the focus of application design and Kevin Diaz had the responsibility of
application programming and was also apart of the botany and plant health.
After deciding what we were going to create we started the project off with
drawing sketches of the project to get ideas.With understanding of ​Urban farmers and
ways to grow plants inside shipping containers as part of a growing movement in
Boston. The Ship containers consist of high tech hydroponic systems.After reading this
article, the biggest take away was how to contain a plant in different kinds of
environments (​Erin Winick)​.​ So we ​used cardboard boxes for a prototype, we got a
visual on how big we would need our project pieces to be that way we could use
materials efficiently.
The process of building the physical model involved acrylic and laser cutters for
the bases of the boxes. We used acrylic in order to give the smart garden an
aesthetically pleasing, modern feel and look, showing clean and simple colors and see
through acrylic for style and have the ability to watch the plants grow. We decided that a
filtration system in the model would work very well as we questioned where the water
would go. In order to save and reuse water for plants, we had the plant water drip
through to a filtering system box underneath each pod through a hole created in the box
and filter out through a pipe that ran out through the side of the system.
The entire model was made watertight through the design of the pieces through
intersections of each side of the boxes that fit together like puzzle pieces with glue. The
pods are where we ran into challenges as they were not fitting together correctly using
acrylic so we had to get pods from the store to use as the plant holders. The technical
portions were added to the project later as we thought we were not going to have time
for them. Our entire project got delayed due to the fab lab closing for a week without
much of a heads up. One technical portion was suggested by a professor that visited
our table during our private showcase when we asked about overexposure of light to the
plants since they all needed different light time. The professor suggested to make some
sort of blind system in order to close off some portions of the light while others are open
that way each plant gets different time in the light.
We approached the blinds idea and Kevin suggested using wooden plates,
wooden nubs and a motor. Kevin and Azalea built and connected each piece of the
blinds together and binded a nail to the blinds by an adhesive hardening clay as a
solution to issues with super glue not keeping the pieces together. The wooden plates,
which were our blinds base, were then connected to the motor by the nail, which was
programmed through a computer that powered the motor instead of batteries. Jaideen
programmed the motors with code from pre experience in coding motors. The motors
allowed for the wooden plates, that we spray painted black to match the design, to
move 90 degrees to cover and undercover the lights, that became our blinds. We
measured out the spacing for the placement of holes to be drillat the top of the box in
order for the motors to be placed and have enough room from each other.
Lastly, Jaideen wanted to add a potentiometer that would control the motor
manually with the turn of a small handle to open and close the blinds to demonstrate for
the final showcase of their purpose. The others had a malfunction so we were unable to
get the other two to work for showcase but got to demonstrate one. We would have
liked for them to be automatic but we unfortunately did not have time. Finally we added
a soil moisture sensor to determine water levels of the soil on a screen so that the
plants are not over or under watered and will tell you when to water. We ran into some
issues of this sensor to work correctly but the same professor that suggested the blinds
helped us to fix this issue.
The app portion of the project was designed by Azalea through Adobe XD. We
thought the app should reflect the look of the physical component so the design of the
app would be clean modern colors, white and grey as the basis, color to add accents
along with very natural nature based colors. The app contained 3 sections. The first
section was plant health that gave information on how to take care of your plants from
how much lights, water and time of growth was needed for healthy plants. The second
section was nutrition, giving nutrition information for each of the plants in the smart
garden so that you know the health benefits of eating these veggies and herbs. Lastly,
the third section was recipe ideas that the plants could be used in to help start
incorporating the healthy foods they are growing into their meals at home. The was then
recorded in the app and uploaded to youtube as an app simulation.
It was decided later in the semester that the programming portion would not
happen after all due to the seeing the time length of the physical portion of the project
that was needed in order to complete it. All in all, we were able to achieve more than we
anticipated in the beginning of the semester and were able to design something that
made our viewers of the project have positive feedback as we based our project on
something we care about. The feedback from everyone that was commonly said was
the fact of how convenient it was and how they would put this in their house, which we
were super happy to hear. They said it was very thought out and had a big purpose to
solve something that is an issue when it comes to food today's world. The project was
definitely challenging but overall was a success.

“Growing Tomatoes Indoors (Is It Worth It?).” ​Tower

Garden​,​www.towergarden.com/blog.read.html/en/2016/9/growing-tomatoes-indoors.html​​.
(​​Tower Garden)​ .

Growing Carrots Indoors

“The 16 Best Healthy, Edible Plants to Grow Indoors.” ​Greatist​, Greatist, 16 Feb.
2018,​greatist.com/health/best-plants-to-grow-indoors.
(​​Greatist)

Growing Lettuce Indoors

“The 16 Best Healthy, Edible Plants to Grow Indoors.” ​Greatist​, Greatist, 16 Feb.
2018,​greatist.com/health/best-plants-to-grow-indoors.
​(​Greatist)​ ​.​
Erin Winick . ​New Autonomous Farm Wants to Produce Food without Human Workers ​. Web.
February 3 2018 .
<https://www.technologyreview.com/s/612230/new-autonomous-farm-wants-to-produce-food-without
-human-workers/>.

Erin Winick. (March 8 2018). ​How to grow four tons of food a year in a metal box without sunlight​.
Retrieved February 3 2018 , from
https://www.technologyreview.com/s/610409/how-to-grow-four-tons-of-food-a-year-in-a-metal-box-wi
thout-sunlight/

Max. ​16 Easy DIY Hydroponic Plans You Can Build in Your Garden This Weekend​.
<https://www.greenandvibrant.com/hydroponic-plans>.