THE CHALLENGES PLANTATION OWNERS FACE TODAY!

• Many trips have to be taken in order to manually check soil humidity on a regular basis.
• It can be difficult to know the exact amount of water to give plants, thus causing stress for the crops by over or under-watering.
• Over-watering plants and crops could lead to higher water costs than what is really needed.
• It is sometimes difficult to know the optimal time to plant without data.
• Manually measuring key data points about crops is often difficult, time-consuming, and more likely to be inaccurate. 

FLORAbot allows plantation owners to instantly know several agricultural data points about their crop, such as;

• Soil Moisture (VWC)
• UVA/B irradiance.
• Ambient Climate Parameters (Temperature & Humidity) includingCO2 and VOC concentration.

thus, enabling better water conservation, less likely to over or under-water crops and save time and resources.

And, WHAT IF PLANTS COULD TALK? The answer is that we can know what they want, which will help us to respond to their needs accurately and precisely. For example, if the temperature rises, the moisture in the soil is decreased; as a result, plants need more water. If they are not watered at the right time, they will gradually wilt and eventually die.

Still puzzled with that intriguing question, please follow further into this project and let’s jump on to further development.

Working Procedure:

The sensor is built around WizFi360-EVB-Pico board developed by WIZnet; which is a fabless IT company that provides Internet processors for the IoT and is globally recognised as the sole innovator to patent the hardwired TCP/IP technology into a microprocessor chip back in year 2001. Since, then multiple of its product-line have been used along many verticals.

WizFi360-EVB-Pico uses RP2040 microcontroller and WizFi360-PA module (built on W600 wireless SoC) that incorporates Wi-Fi capability (2.4GHz, 802.11 b/g/n and AT command configuration with FW Updates through UART and WLAN-OTA) to the board that makes it easy to develop on prototypes requiring connectivity (KC, CE, FCC, TELEC certified), easy integration and intelligence, moreover the design is open-source and is freely available.

For our PoC development, FLORAbot sensor will allow user to interact directly with his/her plant through Alexa/Google Home Service, for this functionality the device utilizes Google Speech Engine Service to converse in a more human-friendly manner such as local weather updates, water requirement, daily-greets and n-things that can be done by user.

Developing the Hardware:

WizFi360-EVB-Pico board acts as the main controller and interfaces with Sparkfun Environmental Board (CCS811/BME280) over I2C [GPIO 12 & 13] and Capacitive Soil Moisture v1.2 probe & GUVA-S12SD UV sensor over analog ports [A0 & A1] respectively.

Please do refer below diagram for connection details:

Feel free to test connections on breadboard, wiring, perf, milled CB or get your first batch of 4L–0.8mm FR4s from the chosen one; till everything works; was lucky enough to electrically & mechanically shape the ideal HW for probe design, that will be housed in a sleek 3D printed enclosure.

And, quickly pulled off with designing enclosure after the hardware was vetted with real-time results **[BEWARE: It’s no way back]**

Plugged in the Ender (still FDM) and after minor changes (the 6σ fails eventually in your first iteration), was able to get a nice enclosure for our hardware (probably FLORAbot…. this is going to be repeated till eons).

Further developing on the Software:

For programming your WizFi360-EVB-Pico board though Arduino IDE, one can follow along instructions provided by Wiznet at following gitlink: Wiznet/WizFi360_arduino_library: Arduino library and examples for WizFi360 (github.com)

One must ensure to update the firmware to the latest version, that is continuously pushed on regular interval. Also, one should...