CIJE Hackathon

What

Led team consisting of classmates Ben Newfield and Joshua Barforough in an inter-jewish-high school Earth day hackathon sponsored by CIJE, the Center for Initiatives in Jewish Education. We were given 5 hours to create a new product that would have a green effect on the world.

Constraints

1.) Every piece of hardware that we would want to incorporate into our project had to be available from a select list of components provided by the organizers.

2.) We were given 1 hour for brainstorming and 5 hours to build our project which limited the research we could do and the complexity of our project.

3.) Our project had to be related to Earth day, meaning that it had to be a green project.

Our Project

While brainstorming, my team and I were walking outside and after noticing the potted plants near the building, we came up with an idea to create a system which would automatically water plants at the most efficient times during the day.

Challenges

The biggest challenge we faced was our limited knowledge of bluetooth modules as well as the given 5 hours to complete the project. We needed to in a few hours, learn how to integrate the bluetooth module into our project and install all the necessary libraries. We also faced difficulties assembling our final build as we were working with sensors we had no prior experience with.

Components

Soil Moisture Sensor

In order to know when the potted plant needed to be water, we integrated a soil moisture sensor coded in Arduino. This sensor would provide us instant feedback on the moisture level in the soil that would allow us know when the plant needs to be watered.

Temperature Sensor

When watering plants, one of the biggest factors that lowers the efficiency of the water used is the outside temperature. If the temperature outside is too high, the water used could evaporate before being absorbed by the plant. We therefore decided to integrate a temperature sensor coded in Arduino in order to avoid watering the plant when it is too hot outside.

Solenoid Valve

Once all of our thresholds for efficient plant watering were met, we know needed to add a component which would automatically water the plant. We decided to integrate a solenoid valve which would be connected to the arduino, and once the conditions were met, it would provide the plant with a set amount of water.

SparkFun Redboard

We used a SparkFun Redboard - Arduino IDE Programmable board for our project since my team members and I had experience with it from previous classes at school.

Bluetooth Module

When creating our project, we wanted to create something that would function autonomously but that would also give the user to wirelessly and manually water the plant if they wanted to. By connecting the bluetooth module to our project and using an app called Blynk, we were able to have real time moisture and temperature values displayed on an iPhone as well as being able to press a button on the app to manually water the plants.