Wah_Ter_Mee

This was a tough one! The goal was to make a system for a plant to be able to water itself, notify me when it has needs to do so, and display information about the environment around it.

The project required all of the coding knowledge gained in this class thus far. While I am very happy with all of the progress I made, there is still a lot that could be done to make it better!One of my guiding principles for this project was to make a sculptural piece that was plant forward, with the electronics being hidden as much as possible.

Design.I have always loved the art of sacred geometry. The plant is seated within a very organically shaped pot, model only for aesthetics. It stood alone before I had conceived of the project as a whole. The pot is sunken into an image of the flower of life. I have explored this very ancient image in much of the art I have made in the past.The electronics are housed in an anthropocentric abstraction. Purposefully humanesque in it's appearance. This project flips the human/plant relationship. The plant can reach out to get it's needs met, instead of being obliged to wait. The bust sits underneath the plant, waiting with it's electrified guts, to transmit to it's human servant.

In the making, we found some rain outside the shop.

Function.

The sculpture has several onboard components that empower it.

The two most pertinent to it's concerns are a capacitive soil moisture sensor and reservoir water detector.The former is a device that reads the soils ability to hold a charge and infers it's H20 content as an analog value.

The latter is a much simpler unit that detects if an exposed circuit has closed, if it is immersed in a bath of water. It's output is boolean. Water or !Water. Comically, the plant will send a text to my phone, informing me that the water is empty and indeed, not wet.

With these detection loos working in concert, the system switches a pump on for short bursts and the plant can drink it's fill. In doing so, it sets a green light, to indicate that it has dispensed and the soil should be wetting. After some time and enough dispensing, the soil will be wet enough to switch to a blue "breathing"

The next most significant capability is it's ability to detect pollutants in the air and warn it's caretaker. Through the implementation of a Grove SEEED air quality sensor, embedded within opening at the top of the electrical housing, it flashes it's Neopixel ring bright red. Very alarming indeed. "Run..... but take me with you!

There is also a BME280, which takes in data about the local environment.Weather, temperature and humidity which is then displayed on an SSD1306 within the electrics housing. Hidden, like everything else.These data, along with all the other information the system can collect, are then then packaged up and sent to an Adafruit dashboard.Further processing is possible to send to displays around the home or elsewhere.

A button is placed on the dash that will allow me to water the plant manually, from anywhere on the planet. Talk about service!

As I get more time to revisit this, I will continue to make improvements.