Problem Statement
Flowers need water and sun. We know this. A place like south Florida is great to have beautiful garden.
However, what happens when the days are too gorgeous? The sun shining and there is not a single cloud in the sky?
Flowers suffer. All plants were not made equally. The amount of water and sun a plant needs varies from plant to plant. In our garden, we have plants native to different climate zones. They are not use to the amounts of sun and water that Florida offers.
A common occurence in my garden is that beautiful flowers only pop out briefly or not at all. Mid-summer, many of the roses burn. The solution is to move them around the patio, but with big gardens and big plants, this becomes a real chore!
Solution: Flower Carts
Shade seeking flower carts are rolling trollies for plants. They are programmed to move the plant towards the shade once the plant has recieved its maximum amount of prescribed sun for the day. Flower carts can hold all ranges of sized-plants. From light,petite plants (approx.3 lbs) to big, heavy plants (approx. 15 lbs).
If you have many Flower Carts in your garden, you will be entertained by their wondering in search for shade at different times of the day. And there is no need to worry...they won't crash into each other! Integrated sensors make the carts "smart carts".
Flower carts are easy to make. Follow the instructions in the Fabrication section to learn how.
How Flower Carts Work
The Flower Cart checks to see if it is a cloudy or sunny day. If it is a cloudy day, the flower carts are allowed to roam free in the patio. You will see them driving along random paths. If it is a sunny day, the flower carts will stay in the sun until a defined hour (e.g., 11am) and then find shade. Once the cart finds its shade, it stays in that section of the patio. If the shade moves, the cart will move along with it.
We use a microncontroller with wifi capabilities to communicate with a weather API that informs the controller of weather conditions. This API also provides information about the current time. The rest of the code regarding navigation, collision avoidance, and shade searching is hard coded into the controller.
We communicate with Firebase. A database that stores all the information regarding the flower cart, the weather, and time. That gives us the ability to check the current status (e.g., driving or not, in the shade or not...) of the flower carts from our own laptops. All Flower Carts in your patio will have access to the same database.
Collision avoidance is simple. If the cart is within 10 centimeters of an object, it immediately stops, reverses, turns 90 degrees and continues on its way.
Shade seeking is easy. If the cart detects a certain drop in light from its phototransistor, we assume it is safe from the sun and the cart stops. The transistor circuit was design to be highly sensitive. That way any noise in the system can be discarded. We can be confident that a large drop in the input reading from the circuit means that the Flower Cart has reached a shady area.