It’s cold in Toronto and I love hot peppers, I also neglect my plants. I want to be able to grow delicious hot peppers year-round.

Because of these reasons I modified a 3.2 cubic foot refrigerator and jam-packed it full of processors, sensors, electricity, dirt, nutrients and water to build a learning, fully-automated indoor garden system.

Project goals

• control moisture and temperature in soil
• control a UV, IR and ‘full-spectrum’ light source(s)
• camera capture growth progress with ability to ‘time-lapse’ and view in real-time
• share configurations (“grow plan”) with other users
• monitor air and soil health
• low cost, high efficiency
• eliminate odours with a blower & carbon filter

I will also be able to control all of this from my mobile phone.

The on-board API / web interface logs all events and performs actions based on real-time updates such as :

• Turn on the exhaust fan when the temperature / humidity reaches a certain threshold
• Turn off the grow-lights after a certain number of hours
• Store settings in order to share and replicate future grow-cycles
• View the camera as well as historical time-lapse videos
• Maybe something fun with OpenCV