Plantly

I have created a smart plant. It is for people who are a bit forgetful like myself. The plant helps you remember whether it needs water, sun, fresh air, etc. .

Trough a website you can then analyse the data of these sensors and see where they stand in relation to the optimal values. But the cute thing about the plant is that you get visual feedback about how it 'feels'. Or as my sparring partner described it: 'a sort of Tamagotchi but with a real plant'. This is done using screens for the eyes and mouth. One also gets audio feedback through the speakers if a value is critical.

This was a school project for MCT at Howest Belgium.

- Housing you like or make yourself (I will use Billy Billy)

- Raspberry Pi (I use the 4 model B 4GB)

- Grove base hat for Raspberry Pi

- Temperature and humidity sensor

- Moisture sensor

- Sunlight sensor

- Air quality sensor

- 4 OLED displays (V2.1)

- Speakers (I reused the ones that Billy Billy had)

- MCP3008 analog digital converter (you can use the Grove base hat to but I used an external ADC)

- LCD + I2C adapter

- Breadboard + T-Cobbler

- Breadboard power supply

- Power cables and cables to connect everything of course

I had a Billy Billy from Zorabots and for my school project I wanted to 'Hack' it. Of course you can also make your own more simplistic design from wood or something else.

Above you can see my sketches of where I want to place everything. The sensors will be glued to the housing itself. The holes for the displays are carefully drilled and then sanded a little more.

Because not everything could be fitted within the housing itself I made a base. The base will be a cylinder that will hold the breadboard and raspberry. Through a hole in this and in the bottom of Billy Billy all cables can be pulled. As finishing touch I color the base in an earth color and provide some fake grass for on top.

First you need to connect the Grove Base hat to the Raspberry, it is best to use the screws for a sturdy build.

Next you want to connect all the sensors and actuators:

1. light sensor to I2C port on the grove base hat
2. 2 OLED displays for the eyes to the other I2C ports
3. temperature and humidity sensor to the PWM port

4. breadboard power supply

5. moisture and air quality sensor trough an ADC on a breadboard connected to a t-cobbler and Pi. And taking the 3.3V and GND of the breadboard power supply.

6. remaining 2 OLED displays to GPIO17-27 and GPIO23-24 (17 and 23 are SDA pins, the other ones are SCL pins)
7. LCD and I2C adapter to the SDA and SCL of the t-cobbler (pins 2 and 3)
8. don't forget a common ground between pi and breadboard power supply on both sides

Pull the grove library

` curl -sL https://github.com/Seeed-Studio/grove.py/raw/master/install.sh | sudo bash -s - `

Download the folder with my files in and place it somewhere on your pi.

Code Github Plantly

It is best to test the code (component by component) before putting it all in a housing.

If your housing is ready, the code and components are tested go ahead and put it all together.

And that's it, hope you enjoy!