1. IoT Hydroponics Project
Group 5
Dominic Pucci
Garrick Servello
Matthew McCoy

2. Problem Statement Hydroponics is not user friendly
Most hydroponic systems are expensive
Wanted to create a system that would allow anyone to practice hydroponics
Wanted to make this system reliable and cheaper than the alternatives

3. Goals and Objectives Create a fully automated hydroponics system
System must be relatively cheap
System must be reliable
System must be efficient

4. General Architecture

5. The Technology

6. Deep Water Culture System
Essentially just a container with water
Holds the plant pots
No pumping of water

7. Electrical Conductivity meter
Sensors
Electrical Conductivity meter
pH meter

8. EZOTM Circuits by Atlas Scientific

9. Raspberry Pi Shield

10. Partial Circuit Setup

11. Pumps

12. Software
Using Java as the main development language because Thingworx supports Java very well.
Pi4J is used to interface with the Raspberry Pi.
Pi4J allows us to easily use the UART port on the Raspberry pi to send and receive data for both the Ph meter and Electrical Conductivity Meter.
Pi4J allows us to easily setup GPIO pins for turning our motors on and off
We use the Thingworx Micro Edge Server to send data from our pi to the Thingworx platform
The Micro Edge Server basically just setups a Websocket to the Thingworx platform to send data back and forth.
We poll the Ph and EC meter at regular intervals to send data to the Thingworx platform.
The sensors had to be calibrated before they could correctly read values. To do these we used a Python script and the pySerial library to send commands to the sensor for easy calibration.

13. UI -- Thingworx Receives data from an edge server running on the pi
Can push data at any interval we want
Displays real-time values of pH and TDS
Stores and displays a history of pH and TDS values in line graphs

14. UI -- Thingworx

15. Accomplishments Have successfully set up a DWC hydroponic system
Have successfully interfaced pH and TDS sensors with the Pi
Have successfully pushed pH and TDS values to ThingWorx in real time

16. Remaining Work Finish setting up the pumps
Set up decision making for when to turn the pumps on and off
Mount all loose circuits

17. Business Potential Very marketable
As mentioned previously, hydroponics is hard!
People would rather buy a premade system than spend a lot of time and money learning hydroponics manually

18. Suggestions for Future Development
ThingWorx is still very limited
Try using a different web interface, or build one from scratch
Implement some form of notification -- or otherwise
Develop a mounting case for all of the circuitry

19. Questions?