By Digi International
At our company headquarters in Minnetonka, Minnesota, we have a self regulating garden. To eliminate the risk of forgetting to water the crops or just to stay comfortable on an overwhelmingly hot summer day, we have developed a garden that is capable of caring for itself.
Using the Digi cloud service, XBee radios, a ConnectPort gateway, and a Web application, the garden can regulate its own watering. The system we have developed monitors soil temperature, soil moisture, ambient temperature and humidity and the levels of the watering tanks. When the soil moisture levels hit a specific threshold, the drip watering system is enabled and brings water to the plants.
The garden is organized into three distinct sections based on the types of environment each crop favors. On your left is the hot and dry side, which is home to vegetables such as tomatoes and peppers. On the right are the vegetables that require cool and moist soil such as carrots, beets, and broccoli, and cauliflower, and around the perimeter of the garden we have flowers planted. The sensor thresholds are set to different levels in each of these sections ensuring that plants are watered at the optimal time according to their preferred environment.