Research shows having plants in a home not only improves the aesthetics of a home but also provides health benefits including toxin removal from the air, mood improvement and an increase in memory retention and focus. No wonder why homeowners have plants throughout their home to take advantage of these benefits. In today’s busy world, it is easy to forget to nutrify, water and monitor the condition of the plants to maximize their lifetime. To address this, homeowners need an easy and cost-effective solution that monitors the health of their plants so they provide the appropriate care.
Solution
NXPs rapid IoT prototyping kit can be used to develop a smart botanical garden. The kit integrates eleven NXP® devices in a small form-factor hardware design and combines it with proven software enablement and a web IDE with GUI based programming. Refer to Figure 1 for the complete block diagram.
Rapid IoT provides the easiest path for anyone to take an idea to a proof-of-concept by simplifying the design process. It eliminates the need to write code and integrates all the necessary functions required by an IoT device including the ability to sense, think and act.
Figure 1. Rapid IoT Prototyping Kit Block Diagram
Design Considerations and Implementation
Figure 2 shows the botanical garden conceptual design. Through a smartphone app you can monitor and control the temperature, humidity and ambient light via Bluetooth Low Energy communication. For data storage and enhanced communication capability, the smartphone device and/or botanical garden control unit should be able to transmit/receive data from the cloud via Wi-Fi or 4G connectivity.
A humidifier and external pump are added to water the plants and add humidity as necessary.
Figure 2. Botanical Garden Design with Rapid IoT
To design this botanical garden using the Rapid IoT kit, the following criteria is considered:
Hardware and Software needed:
Results
The rapid IoT design combines the rapid IoT kit with a docking station expansion board to control a GPIO pin that switches the humidifier and/or pump on or off per commands sent via Bluetooth Low Energy from a smartphone. The temperature, humidity and ambient light sensors are set to read data every second but this interval can be changed according to the application requirements. The control unit and smartphone UI were designed using the Rapid IoT Studio IDE tool without writing a single line of code.
Figure 3 and 4 show the Rapid IoT IDE studio design and the complete setup. Figure 5 and 6 show the Rapid IoT smartphone UI design and the application, which is used to wirelessly monitor and control the environment around the plants.
All the necessary files to build and test this design can be found in this NXP community thread.
Figure 3. Rapid IoT Studio – Function Design
Figure 4. Rapid IoT Kit Hardware – Complete setup
Figure 5. Rapid IoT Studio –Smart Phone UI Design
Figure 6. Botanical Garden Smart Phone Application
Additional Resources
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Javier Solorzano is the Segment Marketing Manager for Industrial and IoT markets. He develops NXP solutions across various applications using NXPs vast product portfolio that make lives safer, better, and easier. He has published over 20 technical publications including application videos, blog entries, articles, and white papers across major electronics magazines.
Kenney Qu, MCU SW engineer for MICR MCU SW team, and Javier Solorzano, Segment Marketing Manager for Industrial and IoT, are exemplifying NXPs mission to develop solutions that make lives safer, better, and easier by using NXPs Rapid IoT prototyping kit to quickly take an idea to proof of concept.
In close collaboration, Kenney Qu, MCU SW engineer for MICR MCU SW team, and Javier Solorzano, Segment Marketing Manager for Industrial and IoT, are exemplifying NXPs mission to develop solutions that make lives safer, better, and easier by using NXPs Rapid IoT prototyping kit to quickly take an idea to proof of concept.
