Gardening/Hydroponics

Feeding our school community through the expansion of hydroponics increases the efficiency and sustainability of growth. We started by analyzing other production hydroponic models and adapting the basic principles used in hydroponic gardening to be compatible with lower-cost materials like PVC and wood. Once the project's form was decided, we designed an adjustable plumbing system to allow for different levels of water in our tubes to account for their larger size, and thus the larger distance between the water and the roots of our plants. Once our construction designs were finalized, we started thinking about how we could automate the processes of nutrient and pH adjustment while being able to monitor the system from a distance, for which we chose the software Mycodo and a variety of sensors, pumps, and cameras from Atlas Scientific connected to a Raspberry Pi.