Problem/Solution
Aquaflower  is a project I worked on towards the end of my junior year of high school, which I continued working on a few weeks before going into my senior year of high school. Like the rest of my projects, I love to make things that have a purpose and a use in the world. I first look for problems to solve, and think about how they can be solved, and why. In this case, the problem was simply death. My family loves to go on vacation, but we always have to leave something behind, and if we leave our plants behind with no care, they will die without water. For my solution, I made an automatic waterer for our plants. Using a soil moisture sensor I made from scratch, it uses electricity and conduction with water to read the soil moisture level of the soil we are using. When the soil drops to the value I set it to, it will think that the plant is too dry and will flow electricity to the waterpump turning it on and watering the plant. So the plant doesn't get overwatered, I set another value if the soil is too wet, and when it reaches this value it will turn the water pump back off. Now when we go on vacations, we don't have to worry about our plants dying because of no water.
progression and media
click photos for description
The Arduino is the motherboard of this mechanism, and it is connected to the LED screen, water pump, H-bridge, led light, and the soil moisture sensor
Displays the water level of the tank, the moisture level of the soil, and the current status of the soil
The triangular shaped tank is made out of sheet acrylic. The water pump tubing connects to the water pump that goes into the water tank which flows through the tube to a 3d printed shower head which releases water onto the plant
For this revision, I wanted the machine to look like a standard flower pot with all of the electronics in the base of the design, which I designed and 3d printed
This revision has a more compact design in order to fit everything inside the pot