The Smart Garden Mini

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Description

The Smart Garden Mini is a prototype intended to prove that a backyard appliance that automates the majority of the gardening experience will accelerate the urban farming movement. The differentiating factor between The Smart Garden Mini and other automated hydroponic food growing systems is that the Root Zone is climate controlled. In addition, The Smart Garden Mini maximizes the economics of food growth by 1) Using the sun instead of light bulbs, 2) Optimizing water usage, and 3) minimizing energy usage. The goal of the smart garden is to reduce the cost of home grown produce enough to the point where it becomes price competitive with store bought vegetables.

Smart Garden Goal:

{ Cost of Labor ($8.25/Hour) + Cost of Capital (Annualized) } / lbs of tomatoes grown per year < $4.00

Components

1 × Laser Cut Root Zone Casing

1 × Laser Cut Water Reserve Tank

1 × Arduino Mega

1 × Adafruit CC3000 Shield

1 × Hand Soldered Arduino Shield & Protoboard

Project Logs

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Adverse Weather
Frank Vigilante • 06/13/2015 at 10:01 • 0 comments

The weather conditions have been terrible in Chicago for the last 7 days. There is no way that anyone in Chicago has been able to support plant life outside.
Germination
Frank Vigilante • 06/06/2015 at 09:02 • 0 comments

Seeds began germinating in The Smart Garden Mini at 6:30 P.M on June 5th, 2015. The Arduino program logged the internal temperature, water level, and light levels of the plant to an SD card. The outside temperature in Chicago as of 3:30 A.M was 51 degrees. The internal temperature of The Smart Garden Mini at 3:30 A.M was 76 degrees.
Also...Hydroponic rocks are being used to grow the tomato plant.