Hey folks, not sure how many people are looking at this page as of yet but for those who do I feel I should explain what's going on with the project a bit more. So as you all may know this project is pretty big, initially it was going to be a software project relegating all hardware interfacing to the DyIO module but I'm hardware engineer and just couldn't resist making more PCBs. That really explains why my logs thus far have been randomly the PCB stuffs and not anything else, I'm just working on what I'm most interested in at the moment and the rest will come after. Now to clear things up, in this post I'm going to give a more detailed breakdown of both the hardware and the software, (the project is still young and developing so a lot of this is subject to change bear with me).

The initial idea was a simple hydroponic garden with internet connectivity, controlled water pump cycles, and controlled lights. Originally it was going to be a DyIO module and a couple relays in a PVC wiring box with plug outlet on the side for the lights and the water pump with an old laptop running the java app. Initially just a simple java software project with minimal hardware, but I have since decided to make it a more comprehensive system with full autonomous. The new system builds on the original concept of the described PVC wiring but adds serial ports on the side to interface with external hardware. Enter the Senor modules, one for analog sensors, digital sensors, and the new addition water quality sensing. The analog and digital sensor modules handle very simple sensors, e.g ones that can be read by an ADC or I2C (digital sensor board is I2C/1W), they will be performing most of the monitoring of the plants. Water quality sensing will be its own module because it requires lots of custom circuitry and will not follow the general purpose design of the other modules. Initially water quality sensing will be very basic, I'm going to start with pH reading of the nutrient solution as well as temp. The plan eventually will be to monitor all the characteristics of the water, dissolved oxygen and electrical conductivity. I should note that water quality monitoring will be specifiy to the hydroponic part of the hybrid farm, but the other sensor modules will be used on both parts. That's the initial plan for the hardware, it's going to be a lot of PCBs (hopefully not too many revisions per module) but it will simplify the wiring of the control box and keep the java application very simple and light.

For software to control the system described above, the main application will consist of a Java web app interfacing with the control box via the USB on the DyIO. The DyIO is basically the central hub/master controller talking to all the boards and modules via serial, this keeps the Java app clean and simple putting almost all the control and sensing tasks into the microcontrollers on the modules.