1. Principles and practices

Assignments

  • The assignment this week was to Plan and sketch a potential Final Project

In few words, the idea of my final project is a self-watering smart vase for small plants.

Nowadays, people have less time and space to grow plants in their homes. Is difficult to maintain a routine. Plant to survive needs continuous care. Therefore, we need to develop a system that can support us remotely by connecting the plans with our mobile phones. Another interesting feature is that our project will use solar panels because is a clean, green source of energy.
The product has to be small that can be used in small apartments/flats and has to be user-friendly (my goal is my boy that has 5 years can use the app and he will help me to take care of our small plant).

The second part is that I want the project to have an Amazon rainforest thematic I choose the “Sumaúma smart plant” as the name of the project because The Sumaúma tree is recognized as the Amazon’s largest tree species in both height and diameter! It can reach up to 60 meters in height! It’s very impressive to be around a gigantic tree like the Sumaúma, see picture below. There is another personal motive to use the Sumaúma but on another occasion I can tell you guys :).

Image1 - Sumaúma tree

Sketch of the Final Project

After defining the initial scope, I drew the first sketch

Image2 - First sketch

I showed the sketch to my tutor at the fab academy and we had a very productive conversation. Then I made the second scratch that can be seen in the figure below

Image3 - Final sketch

The main components of the project will be:

  • Microcontroller ESP

  • Sensor

  • App Control

  • Water Pump

  • Solar Panel