Automated plant watering system
Soil moisture and light sensing through custom signal conditioning into LabVIEW, switching a pump and grow LEDs on when the plant needs them.
the plant shaded its own sensorfiled underMechatronics & control
Two loops look after one plant. A soil moisture sensor, read through a voltage divider and amplifier, triggers a pump when the soil is dry. A phototransistor measures how much light reaches the plant and turns on red and blue LEDs when it’s too dark. Both signals go through a DAQ into a LabVIEW program that handles calibration and switching.
What we’d fix. The plant could shade its own light sensor, so taller mounting pillars are needed. And running the LEDs, phototransistor and moisture sensor through the same channel caused a loading error, where adjusting one changed the other’s reading. Separate channels would have avoided it.
Beyond houseplants, the same setup points at small-scale urban farming, where automating light and water cuts down on daily attention.
Scraps from the build
