Automated Home Hydroponics System

Senior Design - Group E

UCF - Fall 2020

Project Description

The Automated Home Hydroponics System was born with the goal of simplifying the process of growing plants within one’s own home. The fundamentals of this project are based on the basic idea of hydroponics, which by definition, is the process of growing plants in sand, gravel, or liquid, with added nutrients but without soil (oxford dictionary source). The Automated Home Hydroponics System was designed to be water based, with nutrients added in order to promote plant growth. In order to create a hands-free hydroponics system, many sensors come into play to make sure the plants are receiving the nourishments they need. The most important factors are the sensors to monitor the water quality for proper nourishment and enviromental sensors to monitor air temp and humidty along with light intensity for plant growth. That said, pH sensors, TDS sensors, humidty sensors and temperature sensors are included to ensure the most important components are met for plant growth. Since the purpose of our project to make an automated hydroponics system that can adapt to different home environments, additional sensors and modules have been implemented to protect the growing process. Automated systems help keep the water quality stable by dosing nutrient and pH chemical solutions through a system of pumps to ensure the water meets the plant needs. All these components and sensors are monitored by a microcontroller that is programmed to keep the measurements in the desired ranges. Since the project design is modeled after the Nutrient Film Technique, pumps are used to propel the water around the system and administer nutrient pH fluid to balance the water contents. Therefore, the user doesn’t have to do anything on their part. The rest of the sensor information and automation are then displayed to the user throught he local LCD interface and the android application.

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