Ivypots, The ECO Smart Pot AI

Ivypots is a solution for people who want to grow indoors vegetables, without worrying about How Often & How Much Watering the Houseplants are.

Ivypots uses the Peltier Effect to generate water from the humidity to finally be able to water the plants. Thanks to the SD Card we can use the results to create a graph in Excel to analyze the plants to determine how much and how often the plants need to be watered to give the best possible experience.

To be able to produce water, you must already understand what a Peltier module is. The module Peltier is a component that can perform heat exchange without any moving parts. It is a semiconductor cooler which consists of a collection of legs composed of P or N-type semiconductor material.

A leg is constructed by creating several layers of substrate material, built up in order to have some height.

Thermoelectric coolers operate according to the Peltier effect. The effect creates a temperature difference by transferring heat between two electrical junctions.

When the current flows through the junctions of the two conductors, heat is removed at one junction and cooling occurs.

Depending on the direction of the current, when current is applied one side gets hot and the other gets cold. Thanks to this physical effect would be able in theory to produce water thanks to the condensation.

Note that, this is the same process as the so-called Dehumidifier. (or atmospheric water generator)

The system is composed of three parts: the Peltier module, a HeatSink and a fan with these components the Dehumidifier can produce water.

For the device to be most effective a heat sink has to be mounted on the hot side for heat transfer, otherwise, the cooling effect will be minimized and it will not give proper results.

Source: Peltier condensation dehumidifiers By Trotec

Now let's see how the light detection works :

For the light detection, we can use the KY-018 Photoresistor LDR module ideally it will be better to use a phototransistor such as the module that is present on the environement kit of DFrobot because of its high accuracy but it will be more expensive than the project should be.

So how does it work?

The KY-018 Photoresistor LDR module consists of a photoresistor (or Light Dependent Resistor - LDR) and a 10kΩ resistor. These two resistors create a voltage divider, as shown on the following image:

The resistance of a photoresistor decreases in the presence of light and increases in the absence of it.

A photoresistor is a resistor that can vary depending on the state of the light, it will change the value of the voltage applied to it.

To understand a little better how it works, here is an example:

We can see when there is light the value of the voltage is 5V but when there is no light the voltage is 0V.

Now that we know this, we could use this mechanism to deploy LEDs to give light to plants.

How can we reproduce the sunlight?

You may know that plants need light to be able to photosynthesize, but how can we do this?

First of all, plants need a certain spectrum of light especially ultraviolet radiation between 260–380 nm (UV), photosynthetically active radiation between 400-700nm (PAR), and infrared radiation (Far-Red) between 700–850 nm.

So knowing this we can use a certain type of led like the WL-SMDC Horticulture LEDs from Würth Elektronik :

Why I decided to choose 6 Hyper-Red LEDs, 4 Far-red LEDs, 2 Deep-Blue LEDs, and 4 White LEDs.Why these LEDs?

Because of their light spectrum which matches the light spectrum of plants, which is the PAR Spectrum. (that includes Chlorophyll B (400-470nm), and Chlorophyll A (640-670nm) )

/////////////////////////////Preparation:////////////////////////////

All the schematics can be found on my GitHub page

Please note that in this guide examples were configured and tested using Arduino IDE in a Windows environment.

Before starting, download and install the Arduino IDE from the link below.

• Arduino IDE

Additionally, if you are using the Firebeetle esp32-E, minor settings are required in the Arduino IDE.

The new ESP32-E FireBeetle supports WiFi and Bluetooth dual-mode communication, has ultra low power consumption and even includes an on-board charging circuit so you can power it with a lipo battery (and charge it over USB-C).

① Run the Arduino IDE

② Open Preferences

You can open it through 'File → Preferences' in the menu bar of Arduino IDE.

③ Add next link to Additional Boards Manager URL

https://raw.githubusercontent.com/espressif/arduino-esp32/gh-pages/package_esp32_index.json

/////////////////////////////Code :////////////////////////////

• Go to my github page and download the zip file

* This zip file contains all the elements that you need in order to build this project.

• Once that is done, open the zip files, search for Ivypots.ino and open it.
• Finally, transfer the program to the Firebeetle esp32-E.🥸
• If the program works you should have this on the blynk app : 😎

Here is an example of what you can do with the SD card using the excel :

📷Data logger Aht10 (Temperature/Humidity

• Thank You Wiznet for providing the free development kit and providing examples and documentation. 🙌