GrowHomie| Smart-indoor plant box
Professional project at Fotolight
Client: Fotolight
Timeline: 2 weeks
Tags: Interactive experience | physical computing | user experience design
project brief: GrowHomie allows users to grow a plant inside a box in a controlled environmet to get consistent results every time.
project roles:
Ideation
UX
Digital and physical prototyping and testing
Usability testing
The big problem
Amateur home growing users often have a problem with getting a consistent result with their plants. Variables like time, humidity, light and temperature are the playing elements in this process.
Also plants have different needs in different stages of their growth and that’s what makes the process both more human-dependent and error-heavy.
My intentions was to reduce human interference as much as possible and make the process error-free and consistent
The idea
GrowHomie is an automated solution for amateur plant growers. It recieves different inputs from the environment and keeps the optimum growing condition in the growth period.
How it works
The making of
Upon start, the LED starts a 18-6 lighting and darkness period. this is the pre-bloom stage in which the temperature and humidity sensor keeps the environment below 70% humid with the help of 2 fans.
then, when the plant reaches a certain height, it indicated the bloom stage, so a distance sensor recognizes the presence of the plant and switches the system into 12-12 light and dark period, which is the optimum light for the plant at this stage. ALso at this stage, the optimum humidity reset to 60%.
Considerations
I chose a distance sensor as an input for data collection, to understand when the plant is at its blooming stage. when the plant is high enough it cuts in front of the distance sensor and the system resets to “blooming light and humidity” setting. However, when the sensor is blocked, it double check after 1 minute (for the next 3 minutes) to see if the blockage is still happening and then resets. So it doesn’t take an accidental blockage (user’s hand, a bug, etc…) as the trigger.
In the event of power cut, the system should start from the correct cycle and not reset to the beginning cycle. here also the distance sensor indicates which cycle should the system start. I’ve also defined different scenarios for when the power cut happens and different solutions for it. e.g. the power cut happens in the ON period of the second cycle; the system starts from the remaining ON hours and not from the begining of the 12 hours.