We are a group of four group members for our Discovery and Invention class in the Digital Media graduate program at Georgia Institute of Techyeah in Atlanta, Georgia. Our project began by identifying what topics within hardware prototyping interested us as a group, and we landed on sustainability, 3D printing and LED lights as topics we wanted to focus on.
Our interests led us to focusing our efforts on creating a DIY tool for an home gardening environment which measures the amount of sunlight a plant received over one full day. We imagined the use cases for this device were not conductive with the device being complex or requiring much, or any, user input to function.
Our research first began with identifying the following three things :
Our interests led us to focusing our efforts on creating a DIY tool for an home gardening environment which measures the amount of sunlight a plant received over one full day. We imagined the use cases for this device were not conductive with the device being complex or requiring much, or any, user input to function.
Our research first began with identifying the following three things :
Sunlight measurement techniques
We quickly found that there are many standards of measuring sunlight, but the one that we found most applicable for the purposes of this project was the following: gardeningwithconfidence.com
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Reference INSTRUCTABLES
A number of different kinds of tutorials were helpful in planning the different parts of the this project. The following tutorials/instructables were the basis of our planning:
Information Design and Structure
The third big consideration we made for the device was the design of the data display. Monitors and apps and screens seem too complex for a garden environment, so we decided on using LEDs to better fit our design requirements. We specifically decided to use 6 LEDs, each representing 1 hour of sunlight, because through our research we found that 6 hours of light a day was a common standard for sun exposure. (Possibly an evolutionary average based off the fact that our days are 24 hours, and less than half of those hours are likely to have sun any given day).
The third big consideration we made for the device was the design of the data display. Monitors and apps and screens seem too complex for a garden environment, so we decided on using LEDs to better fit our design requirements. We specifically decided to use 6 LEDs, each representing 1 hour of sunlight, because through our research we found that 6 hours of light a day was a common standard for sun exposure. (Possibly an evolutionary average based off the fact that our days are 24 hours, and less than half of those hours are likely to have sun any given day).
Reflections | Stage 1
Ordered the Gemma, upon testing we realized the Gemma didn't work with the LED's and UV sensors.
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Reflections | Stage 2
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Reflections | Stage 3
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Reflections | Stage 4
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Reflections | Stage 5
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Expanding the scope of the Project: The goal of the project was to monitor sun light hours in a home garden environment. During the process we realized there are many different applications that could be added to this project. Although, we were limited by time and resources to add these in, we wanted to share some of the ideas that we came across:
- Adding a wifi data part which would help compile that to data everyday and store it over a longer period of time, to provide a comprehensive view of the sun light hours during course of week etc.
- Adding a water sensor which monitors water levels. Since the design already gets placed in the ground adding a sensor would give a more holistic sense of the plant health.
- The project could also be placed in bigger garden environments provided the landscape is uniform and is not surrounded by tall buildings and trees because that would cause different levels of sunlight i.e under the shade of the trees depending on direction of sun etc.