At the Scientia Impact Lab, I have been developing an automated greenhouse (BioBox) over the past year. It is designed to create optimal growth conditions for individual potted plants by controlling irrigation, light, temperature, and humidity.
Figure 1: Image of the finished BioBox lid, including a custom RGB LED array.
So far, most of my work has been concentrated on the hardware and electronics part of the project. This included 3D designing and printing different structural components, soldering, and wiring together different components like the pump, heating pad, and sensors. One of the latest steps was soldering together the LED array for the BioBox lid, allowing us to control the intensity and wavelength (color) of the light that the plant receives.
One of the main challenges has been the scale and duration of this project. It involves many smaller steps that are essential to the final product and often require several attempts to complete successfully. Initially, it also took time to learn the required skills such as 3D designing, soldering, and coding for Arduino, so progress was less visible. However, it has now been very satisfying to see all the different BioBox components come together.
The final goal of this project is to explore how technology can help plants grow more efficiently by controlling and optimizing environmental variables. This could be especially useful in places where resources are limited, and growing conditions need to be carefully managed.
Now that the hardware is mostly complete, the next steps for me are to close the BioBox and start working on the software. This will involve programming an app/website to automatically control the BioBox, and create optimized growth profiles for different plant types.
By Qassim, Year 8