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September 25, 2015

Dr. Andrew Rawicz School of Engineering Science Simon Fraser University Burnaby, British Columbia V5A 1S6 RE: ENSC 305W/440 Project Proposal for Smart Garden System Dear Dr. Rawicz: The attached document gives an overview of our Capstone Engineering Science Project. The goal of our project is to build an auto watering system for people to take care their lovely plants anywhere they want. In this proposal, we show the blueprint of our idea, which consist of design concept and analysis, preliminary budget and funding, breakdown of the project schedule and the tasks of each team member. Furthermore, this document provides detailed analysis of marketplace, and the future of our product. “Smart Garden”was established by six SFU engineering students: Timmy Kwok, Wei Di, Lai, Siyan, Bo and Tianguang, who are very reasonable and motivated students. If you have any further questions or concerns about our proposal, please feel free to contact as by phone at 778-316-2022 or by e-mail at sumyuek@sfu.ca. Yours Sincerely,

Timmy Kwok Enclosure: Proposal for Smart Garden System

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Proposal for a

Smart Garden System

Project Team members: Timmy Kwok Duling Lai Weidi Zhai Siyan Chen Bo Sun Tiangguang zhang Contact Person: Timmy Kwok sumyuek@sfu.ca Submitted to: Dr. Andrew Rawicz Steve Whitmore School of Engineering Science Simon Fraser University Date: September 28, 2015

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EXECUTIVE SUMMARY

As we all know that insufficient watering can cause plants to wilt and even death, over-watering will also produce the similar serious problems. In addition, irregular watering can also leads to the death of some plants, or to get poor crop. Therefore, the amount of watering is essential to ensure that the production of fruits and vegetables. Moreover, for most people who love flowers, they do not have a full day to take care of their plants, they have to go to work during daytime, only water their plants at night. However, sometimes, due to the intense workload, people are too tired to water the flowers when they get home, or people cannot water their plants because they will be away from home for days. The above circumstances will lead to unhealthy growth of plants. To help with those issues, our team comes up an idea to make the watering process “smart”. Our goal is to design an automatic watering system, of which two sensors are used: Humidity sensors, to examining the soil moisture; temperature sensors, to sense the temperature of surrounding environment. The data collected from these two sensors are sent to web server via wireless connection, and the data are accessible through web application. After analyzing those data by the web application, the watering schedule can be determined and automatically executed. Therefore, even if you are not able to water your plants on time, our system will help you water the plants when necessary. You no longer have to worry about your plants. We will be working on the prototype system for the next three months and complete the first generation model with an estimated cost of $387. Please check out the Budget and Schedule section for detailed budget and schedule of the project. From our research, the potential market of watering plants is promising. Our team consists of six engineering science students with a variety of skills in hardware, electronics, and software design. We will finish the project within 12 weeks.

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TABLE OF CONTENTS

Executive Summary ................................................................................................. iii

Introduction ............................................................................................................. 1

System Overview ...................................................................................................... 3

Budget ..................................................................................................................... 5

Funding .................................................................................................................... 6

Marketability ............................................................................................................ 7

Schedule .................................................................................................................. 9

TABLE OF FIGURES

Figure 1 High level graphic of the smart garden system ..................................... 2

Figure 2 Basic Block diagram of the system ................................................... 3

Figure 3 the auto irrigation system ............................................................. 7

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INTRODUCTION

A study suggested that the average North American family uses 320 gallons of water per

day, about 30 percent of which is devoted to outdoor garden usage. However, over 50

percent of the water used in the garden is wasted due to inefficient watering methods

and system (EPA, 2015).

Despite the water wasted in the garden, the traditional watering system is not flexible

to changing weather and different plants types. In fact, the amount of water that is

required can vary upon the type of plants, climate and locations. Particularly, in

Southeast, where the climate is dry, a household can have 60 percent of its water used

in their garden (EPA, 2015), whereas in Northwest, only 40 percent of its water are

used in the garden because the weather is wet.

Traditional watering system may also do harm to the plant by over watering or lack of

watering. People are natural to forget watering their plants, or they could use too much

water when it is about to rain so the plants are drowning. Thus, the objective of our

project is to design a garden system which you can access the real time moisture,

temperature and weather information through your smartphone, and make watering

schedule automatically or manually by tab a button on your smart phone (high-level

graphic shown in Fig 1).

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Figure 1: High level graphic of the smart garden system

With wireless revolution, more and more things in our life have become “smart”.

However, there are not many products that aimed to make our gardening system

“smart”. The market is new land where there are not many competitors present, yet it

is a large blue ocean market where large companies can raise like Nest in smart

thermostat market.

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SYSTEM OVERVIEW

System Information:

The smart garden system mainly composes of several elements, such as sensors,

microcontrollers, LCD display, plant water sprinklers, and small water pumps. Basically,

this project consists of two parts, hardware circuitry and software application, which

operates to display information to the user and control the watering schedule. As the

diagram shown in Figure 2, the two sensors will continuously react to the outside

environment, collect data and send it to the microcontroller via Internet. The data will

be analyzed by the microcontroller. The users can access the information, which from

microcontroller, on their smartphones. For watering, customers have two options. First,

the customers can manually remote control the water sprinkler by using phone

application to send command to the microcontroller. Second, the customers can allow

the system to automatically adjust the watering schedule. The basic block diagram of

the whole system is shown below:

Figure 2: Basic Block diagram of the system

System Specification

Microcontroller-Raspberry pi 2: use to analyze data from sensors and smart phone app. The Microcontroller reads the information from the sensors and calculates the best solution for the plant, then operates the water sprinklers. In order to let users

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watering at the best efficiency, the microcontroller can also accept input from the smart phone and provide calculated information to the smart phone.

1. The Microcontroller has 4 USB ports which can easily installs wireless USB adaptor to communicate to the web server.

2. The Microcontroller can also program by difference computer language (C, Java) which help developer to understand the process of the equipment.

Web application/smartphone application: an application is created to access the plants information. After the data is collected, it is packed and sent to the database on web server. The application grabs information from the web server and displays it to the user interface. Sensors:

1. Soil Moisture Sensor: use to measure the water content in soil. The sensors that we are used have the function of readings of volumetric soil water content at the

depth they are placed. Soil moisture typically ranges from 0 to 0.4 𝑚3 of water

per 𝑚3of the soil. For our soil moisture sensors, we will set a specific range of values for both dry and saturated soil conditions. The information will be sent to our microcontroller for data analysis.

2. Temperature sensor: detect the surrounding temperature by sensing a corresponding physical characteristic, such as electrical resistance, electromagnetic field (EMF) and thermal radiation.

Sprinklers: A physical part which use to watering the garden controlled by microcontroller. Weather information: Specifically, the weather information is the data caught by the temperature sensor.

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BUDGET

The tentative budget for building up a demo smart garden system is listed in Table 1 below.

“Other cost” in the table covers small mechanical components of our system, such as tubes and

wires. All the components will be purchases from Amazon at a higher cost for fast delivery. The

actual cost of the system can be much lower than our budget.

Table 1 Tentative budget for smart garden system demo

Equipment List Expected Cost ($)

Raspberry Pi 2 (Microcontroller) 65.99

Soil moisture sensor x 2 14.00x2

LCD display x 2 23.99x2

Temperature sensor x 2 4.99x2

Micro Servo Motor x 2 14.99x2

Small water pump x2 21.45x2

Plant water Sprinkler x 4 5.00x4

Wi-Fi USB Adapter 9.99

SD card 9.99

Shipping cost 50.00

Other cost 60.00

Total cost 374.83

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FUNDING

The initial demo requires more capital than the final product delivered to the market

given materials wasted in design process and economies of scale in production. The cost

of the project will mainly come from The Engineering Science Student Endowment Fund

(ESSEF). Application has been sent to ESSEF, and presentation of cost breakdown has

been done. Final decision of how much funding we can get from ESSEF will reach us

shortly. If we went over our budget, our team members are willing to share the

remaining financial costs of the project. An accurate account of all financial

transactions will be kept to ensure proper reimbursement to members.

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MARKETABILITY

In the market, there are two kinds systems that are in the same category as our product.

Specifically, they are drip irrigation system and sprinkler irrigation system. Both of

these two systems can be automated. For example, the auto irrigation system (as shown

in Fig 3)

Figure 3 the auto irrigation system

Source: http://andysworld.org.uk/blog/wp-content/uploads/2009/05/hozelockac4aca1.jpg

This is one of the most popular products in the present market, and it has the following

functions:

Automatic indoor watering system timer with control for up to 6 zones.

Simple zone-by-zone setting allows you to customize watering schedules for

different areas.

Easy-to-operate system lets you choose start time, watering duration, and days of

week.

It can be irrigated automatically at a specific time, specific area with fixed amount of

water. For irrigating a single kind plant, these functions are enough. However, for our

garden, which contains many different flowers, its function is so unitary. Different

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plants have different water requirements; even for a single plant, the water

requirements in different situation are different. Irrigating all plants at the same rate

with the same fixed amount of water could do harm to them.

Our product is designed to detect the real time moisture, temperature and the weather

information. By analyzing all of these factors and the profiles of different plants it has

in its database, our smart garden system can determine whether the plant should be

irrigated or not. If the plant needs irrigation, it will notify the users. The users can

control the irrigation system by the web app to water the plant; or the irrigation

schedule can be automatically set if users want.

By now, there are few similar products in the market, and the current product cannot

provide all of the functionalities that our smart garden system can provide to the users.

Thus, our product will be the unique one in a period.

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SCHEDULE

ID Task Name September October November December

Date 28th 15th 20th 15th 30th 2nd

1 Research

2 Proposal

3 Functional Specification

4 Design Specification

5 Coding in C

6 Integration/ Prototype Testing

7 Debugging Prototype

8 Link Document to devices

9 Process Report

2015

Date Task

September 28th Project Proposal

October 19th Functional Specification Completed

October 25th 1st Progress Report Completed (Oral)

November 9th Design Specification Completed

November 23rd 2nd Progress Report Completed (written)

December 1st Final Progress Report/ Working Prototype Completed

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CONCLUSION

Our product, Smart Garden, is a smart system with mobile application. Smart Garden

is an automobile system embedded with various sensors, microcontroller, and wireless

function. It is able to test environment, collect and analyze environmental information,

and remote control household sprinklers through mobile application. Smart Garden

solves a daily problem with a convenience and economical solution for many families

with a garden.

For the similar products in the market, Smart Garden takes advantages not only in low

cost but also in more comprehensive functions, such as humility and temperature

sensing. We are also enabled one of the most popular technologies, mobile application,

in to our Smart Garden. This application makes our product more accessible and

convenient for customers than other similar products in the market. We believe that

our product can share the market with all the above advantages.

Low energy and nature resource cost, low manufacturing cost, and good user

experience are the key elements for our product, Smart Garden. We believe that our

efforts will be a small step for technologies, but a big step for our daily life.

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COMPANY PROFILE:

Chief Executive Officer CEO- Timmy Kwok:

Timmy Kwok is a third year Electronics Engineering Student at Simon Fraser University.

During his study, he has done couple of personal projects in C++ and C, and he also has

experiences in programming different computer languages. He is familiar with most of

the equipment which he had used in classes, such as, micro-controller, power supply,

different sensors and function generators. Last but no least, the most important thing

which makes a successful project is my communicate skill and leadership.

Weidi Zhai:

Weidi is a fourth year Electronics Engineering student at SFU, exposed to several core

courses in computer design and lab equipment. He has experience in programming by

C++ language, and planning and implementing tests and analysis on software. Familiar

with lab equipment, such as the oscilloscope, function generator and Semiconductor

Parameter Analyzer that can good provide technical support.

Tianguang Zhang:

Tianguang Zhang is a 4th year Electronics engineering student at Simon Fraser University.

During his studies, he has been trained with very strong software and hardware skills.

He has a lot of experiences of Matlab, C++, VHDL, Solidworks, Assembly Language and

other object oriented programs. He is an experienced user of electronic laboratory

equipment such as function generators, oscilloscopes, power supplies, DMM, and other

basic related equipment. He also has the knowledge of the electronic circuits design

and the system trouble shooting.

Siyan Chen:

Siyan Chen is a fourth year System Engineering student in Simon Fraser University. He

had taken a lot of courses and he had many practical experiences. For instance, Siyan

Chen is adept at Using SolidWorks, several electronic devices (power supply, electric

soldering iron, oscilloscope, function generator and DMM). Moreover, he is quite

familiar with python, C++, Real-time Embedded System and Matlab. Siyan Chen has just

worked in Coship Electronics Company for four months as a PCB quality assurance in his

first Co-op term. He has experience with BJT, MOSFET, diode and other components.

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Siyan Chen can contribute his circuit design skill and hardware knowledge into this

project.

Bo Sun

Bo is a Fourth year undergraduate engineering student in Electronics. His past work

experience was in R&D and industry. His R&D topics are in printed electronics and

organic chemistry. He also spent two terms worked at xDSL group at Broadcom as my

coop. He is also interested in Business and invited by CEIBS, which is the top 1 business

school in Asia, to experience top MBA program in Asia in this summer.

Duling Lai

Duling is a fourth year Electronic Engineering student with a business minor. He has

previous work experience in wireless communication when he worked as a hardware

coop at Sierra Wireless. In addition, he is also experienced with PCIe or SATA high speed

switch when he worked as a product engineer at PMC-Sierra. Last year, he launched a

small startup company with an iOS application “MegaEvent”. As a student with a

business minor, he is good at project management and funding management.

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REFERENCES

Department, N. R. (2015, September 27). Water amd soil requirements. Retrieved from

www.fao.org/docrep/u3160e/u3160e04.htm

EPA. (2015). Outdoor Water Use in the United States. Retrieved from United States Environmental

Protection Agency: http://www.epa.gov/watersense/pubs/outdoor.html

Juan M., Dana P., & Xavier P. (2007). Irrigation Monitoring with Soil Water Sensors. Texas Copperative

Extension, B-6194

Temperature Sensor Information (n.d.). ISH Engineering360. Retrieved from

http://www.globalspec.com/learnmore/sensors_transducers_detectors/temperature_sensing/t

emperature_sensors

Karvinen, K., & Karvinen, T.(2014). Make: Getting Started with Sensors(1st ed.).