Farming+: Aeroponic Vertical Greenhouse using IoT
Date: Feb 2024
Objective
To design and implement an IoT-enabled vertical aeroponic greenhouse that optimizes plant growth through precise environmental control, aiming to significantly reduce water usage and increase crop yield compared to traditional farming methods.
Approach
The system is built around an STM32 microcontroller featuring a 32-bit ARM Cortex-M3 processor, which serves as the central control unit. It integrates a comprehensive suite of 11 sensors to monitor environmental parameters such as temperature, humidity, pH, and nutrient levels, along with 3 actuators to manage lighting, ventilation, and a precision nutrient misting system. Communication between the microcontroller and peripherals is handled via UART, I2C, and SPI protocols. The IoT functionality is enabled through a WiFi module using the MQTT protocol to transmit real-time sensor data to the Arduino Cloud, allowing for remote monitoring and data analysis.
Results
The implemented system demonstrated a significant improvement in resource efficiency, achieving a 95% reduction in water consumption compared to conventional soil-based agriculture. The controlled environment led to optimized plant growth, resulting in 50% higher crop yields and a 35% faster growth cycle. Furthermore, the vertical design allowed for a 3 to 5 times greater planting density within the same physical footprint. A user-friendly IoT dashboard was successfully developed, providing farmers with real-time insights and the ability to manually override system settings via both desktop and mobile applications.
Project Visualizations
Code Repository
Technical Skills
Learnings/Takeaways
This project validated the effectiveness of smart aeroponic techniques in creating a highly efficient and sustainable agricultural system. A key takeaway was the significant impact of resource management, particularly the 95% reduction in water usage, which has profound implications for urban farming in resource-scarce environments. The project provided deep insights into the challenges and solutions of integrating a complex multi-microcontroller system, managing data flow with IoT protocols like MQTT, and developing a practical, user-centric dashboard. It underscored the importance of a holistic design approach that combines hardware engineering, embedded software development, and cloud-based data analytics to solve real-world problems in sustainable agriculture.