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Design and Control of a Hydroponics System
Hydroponics is a technique to grow plants without soil, but therefore in nutrient rich solutions. This project aims to construct a small scale fully automated hydroponics system, including the hardware, controller and filter designs, and software implementation. The implementation will finally be validated by growing actual plants. Hydroponics offers an alternative to conventional agriculture, minimizing water usage, fertilization and space requirements and allowing to create optimal environments for plants to grow. Combined it offers a potential future technology to fight food limitations in the face of a rising world population and climate change.
Keywords: Control Theory, Engineering, Hydroponics
Four Bachelor projects have been carried out in the last semester to design a first prototype of a hydroponics system. While a lot of experience has been collected with this first prototype, it is now the aim to combine this knowledge to construct an improved hydroponics system, overcoming issues of the current design and simplifying it.
The goal is to construct a low cost, easy-to-replicate and effective setup. First, a new design of the casing must be constructed using off-the-shelf materials. Current approaches are based on IKEA-furniture. A draft of a potential new design is available, but the student can be creative here. Sensors (e.g., humidity, temperature, CO2) and actuators (e.g., ventilation, humidification) can be taken from the first prototype. All sensors and actuators are already integrated in an existing software architecture and can be used out of the box. The only exception is the lighting and heating. A circuit must be designed to adjust the light intensity and a good way to realize the heating must be found.
Finally, a controller will be implemented to control the temperature, humidity, and CO2 inside the box. If time permits, the student may also focus on autonomously learning optimal environmental factors for the plant growth.
This project demands the application of knowledge from a wide range of domains, including circuit design, system theory and control theory and, due to the novelty of the problem, requires creative solutions. At the same time, it offers hugh freedom in the utilized approach and freedom on the emphasized problems, down to the theoretically involved question of optimally controlling the plant growth itself. The student will be required to show good project management skills, breaking down the project problem into smaller subproblems and managing the time accordingly.
Four Bachelor projects have been carried out in the last semester to design a first prototype of a hydroponics system. While a lot of experience has been collected with this first prototype, it is now the aim to combine this knowledge to construct an improved hydroponics system, overcoming issues of the current design and simplifying it.
The goal is to construct a low cost, easy-to-replicate and effective setup. First, a new design of the casing must be constructed using off-the-shelf materials. Current approaches are based on IKEA-furniture. A draft of a potential new design is available, but the student can be creative here. Sensors (e.g., humidity, temperature, CO2) and actuators (e.g., ventilation, humidification) can be taken from the first prototype. All sensors and actuators are already integrated in an existing software architecture and can be used out of the box. The only exception is the lighting and heating. A circuit must be designed to adjust the light intensity and a good way to realize the heating must be found.
Finally, a controller will be implemented to control the temperature, humidity, and CO2 inside the box. If time permits, the student may also focus on autonomously learning optimal environmental factors for the plant growth.
This project demands the application of knowledge from a wide range of domains, including circuit design, system theory and control theory and, due to the novelty of the problem, requires creative solutions. At the same time, it offers hugh freedom in the utilized approach and freedom on the emphasized problems, down to the theoretically involved question of optimally controlling the plant growth itself. The student will be required to show good project management skills, breaking down the project problem into smaller subproblems and managing the time accordingly.
Summarized, the goals are
- Design a new simplified casing
- Integrate all sensors and actuators of the prior prototype into the new setup
- Design a PCB for the lighting, such that the light intensity can be adjusted
- Implement the ability to control the temperature of the system
- Design a controller to adjust the environmental factors inside the system autonomously
- Grow first plants and validate the system
- If time permits, find optimal growing conditions for the plants using a learning based algorithm
Summarized, the goals are
- Design a new simplified casing
- Integrate all sensors and actuators of the prior prototype into the new setup
- Design a PCB for the lighting, such that the light intensity can be adjusted
- Implement the ability to control the temperature of the system
- Design a controller to adjust the environmental factors inside the system autonomously
- Grow first plants and validate the system
- If time permits, find optimal growing conditions for the plants using a learning based algorithm
Please send your resume/CV and transcript of records via email to nikschmid@ethz.ch.
Please send your resume/CV and transcript of records via email to nikschmid@ethz.ch.