GardenGo

Hydroponic gardening is an emerging type of gardening made easy with GardenGo, reducing the space and materials needed to grow food and slowly leading to save resources and eliminate world hunger.

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Inspiration

My parents love to garden. However, while we would love to grow an entire garden, we do not have the space to do so. In order to solve this problem, I started looking at different ways to garden with less space. Enter Hydroponic gardening, a new, emerging and novel way to garden which not only saves space, but also saves materials such as soil and water. Usually, the produce or herb that is being grown with the help of hydroponic gardening is placed in a PVC like structure and something that can support its roots. This makes the entire process quite compact and therefore, saves space and resources such as both soil and water. According to iGrow, this type of gardening "can direct all their energy into producing higher yields, denser vegetation, faster growth, and more flavorful crops." However, like all good things, there are drawbacks. One drawback to hydroponic gardening is that it requires a lot of mainteninece. So I decided on helping accelerate and improve this type of gardening with an app and product I have design and taken the liberty to name GardenGo. The main goals of this product is to make hydroponic gardening as easy to maintain and as cheap as possiblle.

What it does

I have designed an app on Figma which will eventually be connected to sensors of an arduino. The main consensus of this App and Product is to work as a combo package, where the consumer would buy the physical arduino product and download the app that goes along with it so that they can monitor their very own hydroponic garden with little effort and no time. The consumer will also be able to change the humidity and temperature with the help of a fan which I hope to integrate in the near future.

How I built it

I used a LCD screen to output the stats of the garden (humidity and temperature) with the help of a DHT11 sensor and the LiquidCrystalDisplay & Simple DTH sensor libraries to easily show the user how their garden is doing. The red LED lights up if the humidity and/or temperature are not in the ideal range of the humidity (40% - 70%) and temperature (16 - 26 degrees C). In the future, I hope to be able to connect the app and the arduino together using a USB microconnector. (I do not have the materials as of right now to follow through this.) The app would show easy, on the go data of the garden, helping the user take care of it.

Challenges we ran into

I was going to connect the app and the arduino, however, I realized that that was not possible because I do not have all the components to do so. I also wanted to use and integrate Sashido and Google Teachable Machine so that the user would be able to take a picture of their garden and have a diagnosis of what is going on with their garden - whether it be overwatered, underwatered, or just infested with pests. I will do this after the Hackathon ends and I have some more time to figure the interface out. I was also going to integrate a fan to my product, however, the breadboard I had was not compatible with the DC motor. After the hackathon, I hope to be able to transfer the LCD and LED to the different breadboard I have and implement the DC motor and fan on the compatible breadboard (so switching the breadboards).

Accomplishments that we're proud of

It is good that one of the main problems that I am trying to solve might actually be able to be solved with this product package. This is because hydroponic gardening is a new type of gardening, so there are not a lot of product and apps that are geared to accelerate this type of gardening on the market yet. This product will help not only save space, but also, time, and resources.

What we learned

I have learned to use Google Teachable Machine and how it may be integrated into this product. The machine learning AI will be able to diagnose a plant based on images, and with the help of the arduino sensor, the product as a whole will be extrememly powerful in maintaining the garden as mutiple factors (image, temperature, humidity) will be taken into consideration. I have also learned how to use Figma and how to output data to the LCD screen and LED. Finally, I have learned how to use the DC motor with my arduino so that I can swith the breadboards and make the LED, LCD, and DC motor/fan work together in conjuntion.

Finance and Health

I have also learned a lot about the business model and how to manufacture a product. In terms of finance and getting this product into production, I had concluded that the best ways to market is to use social media apps such as Facebook, Instagram and TikTok as that will reach all generations who are avid garderners. The cost of each sensor will be around $20 because the arduino elegoo kits are around the same price with more components so there would be a net profit of around $5 - $10. In terms of health, I think that since this type of gardening can be done all year long, fresh produce will also be available all year long, helping give healthier options at cheaper prices as the supply of produce will be high. This will improve the overall health of a lot of garderners and wholesalers who provide to the consumers.

What's next for GardenGo

Once I get the USB microcontroller, I will start integrating the arduino to the app. I hope that I can also make the hardware aspect of it look nicer with some woodwork, most likely ground contact pressure treated lumber/ teak so that it can withstand the water and last a long time. While this product has a long way to go, I hope to be able to help this product become a reality and eventually integrate it into large hydroponic gardens. I also hope to include a fan or some sort of cooling system so that the hydroponic garden can be controlled with the click of a couple of buttons from the comfort of their phone. I will be using Xamarin or Android Studios with the help of Sashido to make this app become a reality.

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