Assignment:
Individual assignment:
- Complete your final project
What tasks have been completed, and what tasks remain?
- I have completed pH meter and calibrated it.
- I have completed load sensor and calibrated it.
- I have completed peristaltic pumps and calibrated them.
- The structure is designed and made.
- I have made the temperature sensor, but it needs to be dipped in resin to make it able to operate in water.
- Acrylic box for hydroponic solution is made.
- The mounts for the peristaltic pumps needs to be made. Design 70 % done. To be done 8.6.
- The mount for the pH meter needs to be made. To be done 8.6.
- Electronics boxing and mounting needs to be made. To be done 8.6.
- Code integration needs to be made. To be finalized in week 24.
- To bundle the motor wires together. To be finalized in week 24.
- Documentation, video and slide of the complete project. To be finalized before 20.6.
Optional tasks to be completed:
- EC meter board is not designed yet or made yet. The schematic and code can be found in dfrobot.com. I have the electrode, calibration solutions and all of the componenets for the board. Maybe in week 24.
- Bluetooth or wifi connection and interface to an Android device. Maybe in week 24.
What has worked? what hasn't?
- Everything I have finished now is working and calibrated. The codes need to be integrated together.
- Acrylic box is one of the big question marks. It cracked a little when I did the welding and I'm not sure how long it will last. I would never use it inside a house. Greenhouse with dirt floor is fine, but you have to be careful if you are going to stay away for longer periods of time, because if the box fails plants won't get water and they would dry out and die in a couple of days.
What questions need to be resolved?
- The biggest question is that how far I'm able to go with the project. I hope that I get all the functionality done and the automation equipment could be installed in real use right after the presentation is made.
- For the actual use, I probably have to change the acrylic box for a shop-bought box.
What will happen when?
- I can get most of the things done in 8.6, but the code integration probably needs a little more time, but I will finalize it in the week 24. I will document as I go, so the documentation is done when everything is made.
- The video and slide of the project are going to be ready before 20.6.
What have you learned?
The Fab academy has been incredible learning experince. I have learnt so much things that I couldn't do before. Basically CAD was the only thing that I had good skills before the course. I have used C and C++ before the course to make subroutines for computational fluid dynamics and Python to analyze data. I have also made an areal energy calculator program for energy zoning, but it was quite a simple program. So I could do the required code with a little bit of work.
I knew some basics about electronics, because I had done solar panels and a 12 V battery driven heat transfer system (temperature measurements) that was run with Arduino. Those were simple things compared to what I have learnt in this course. I like to design my own boards and have gotten some knowledge for that. Still it requires a lot of learning to make designs of my own, to know what is needed, to be able to calculate resistors and operation amplifiers for the different purposes. Just copying someone's schematics and making a board is still a nice thing to be able to do and to actually understand why things are made in a way they have been made.
All of the machines were new to me and I have hugely enjoyed to operate them and to make my own plans to reality. These machines make it possible. The methods to make molds and to cast was something really interesting and I have some ideas for the future. Since there is very little information on working with metals during the course, I would like to learn about that after the course is done.