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Welcome to the GroPro Wiki!
Here you will find all documentation and relevant information about the GroPro - an adaptive artificial sunlight radiator to provide optimum photosynthetic results in plant growing applications.
The sections detail the explanations of all hardware and software implementations in order to help you with cloning this project and understanding it as best as possible.
Build and user Instructions can be found in the 'Software', 'Hardware' and 'Android Application' sections of this Wiki.
Adaptive artificial sunlight radiator to provide optimum photosynthetic results in plant growing applications.
The aim of this project is to design an adaptive lighting system for optimising plant growth. It provides improved usability over standard lighting systems that are currently available as the user can control and monitor the device from an Android phone application or not interact with device at all during operation due to its real-time auto-adjustment protocol. The project is completed in association with the University of Glasgow and is an exercise to gain experience with real-time embedded programming.
This project consists of an ambient light sensor that polls brightness values from the environment and then sends this data to a Raspberry Pi device for further processing. The output from the Pi is sent to control the intensity of a matrix of various LEDs. The system correlates the changes in natural light to a relative output value that controls the LED intensity appropriately. The goal is to compensate for the reduction in natural sunlight by increasing the intensity of artificial light, therefore continuing to stimulate photosynthesis and thus optimising plant growth.
Olly Warner is responsible for all circuit design, hardware implementation and PCB design and fabrication. Alasdair Robertson is responsible for the core RPi3 code as well as sensor data aquisition, system evaluation and output to four MAX7219 LED Drivers for RGB LEDs and PWM output for UV & IR LEDs. Andrew Fyfe is responsible for the Android application design, implementation and its integration with the overall system. The time for hardware and software development is divided equally across the team, allowing each component to be completed for the set deadlines. This means that more time is availiable for debugging and construction of the final product.
