STING: Greenhouse Light Management System

STING helps ensure plants in a greenhouse that need a certain level of light for growth 24/7 to get all the light they need!

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STING: Greenhouse Light Management System

Things used in this project

Hardware components

Texas Instruments EK-TM4C123GXL TM4C Tiva LaunchPad

Seeed Studio Grove Starter Kit for LaunchPad

Seeed Grove - Buzzer

Seeed Grove - 4-Digit Display

Seeed Studio Grove - Light Sensor

Software apps and online services

Texas Instruments Energia

Story

Inspiration

Inspired by the Lord of the Rings, we named our team STING, the shortsword made by elves that helps Bilbo detect the approaching of Orcs, the embodiment of darkness. It grows blue when Orcs get close to it and thus alarm the blade holder about the upcoming danger.

Our real life utilization of the device, not unlike the situation in the Lord of the Rings, is to detect the circumstance when it gets dark, only this time in a greenhouse, such as during cloudy days and after the fall of night, and to notify the staffs about the circumstance.

Overview

This device is implemented as an alarm in the greenhouse, where the plants need exposure to light 24/7. It can keep track of the intensity of natural sunlight, which, when below a certain level that the plants need to grow, will trigger the alarm to ring a song and blink an LED light to notify people about the lack of light. This way, the staffs will realize the insufficiency of the natural light and manually turn on the laboratory lighting system to keep an adequate level of light in the greenhouse.

How we make it?

The alert system consists of four main modules - a light sensor, a buzzer, an LED, and the four-digital display.

The four-digit display demonstrates the intensity level of the amount of light in the room, which is kept track of by the light sensor and when below a certain value, set as the threshold by the user, triggers the alarm system. When the sensor detected insufficient light, it will trigger the buzzer and the LED. The buzzer and the LED are specially connected in a way so that as the buzzer plays the Twinkle Twinkle Little Star song, the LED blinks in accordance with the melody. When the intensity of light in the room gets above the threshold and the light sensor detects enough light again, the LED stops blinking and the buzzer stops singing. With the system, the lab staff can maintain a sufficient amount of light for the plants in the greenhouse.

Code

Sting Source Code

#include "TM1637.h" 

/* Macro Define */
#define CLK               38                  /* 4-Digit Display clock pin */
#define DIO               37                 /* 4-Digit Display data pin */
#define LIGHT_SENSOR      24                 /* pin connected to the Light Sensor */
#define BUZZER_PIN 39 /* sig pin of the buzzer */

#define LED RED_LED /* LED pin */
#define THRESHOLD_VALUE 1000 
#define ON HIGH /* led on */
#define OFF LOW  /* led off */
#define _handle_led(x) digitalWrite(LED, x) /* handle led */

/* Global Variables */
TM1637 tm1637(CLK, DIO);                  /* 4-Digit Display object */
int analog_value = 0;                     /* variable to store the value coming from Light Sensor */
int8_t bits[4] = {0};                     /* array to store the single digits of the value */

// buzzer initialization 
int length = 15; /* the number of notes */
char notes[] = "ccggaagffeeddc ";
int beats[] = { 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 2, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 2, 4 }; 
int tempo = 300;

/* the setup() method runs once, when the sketch starts */
void setup() 
{
  /* Initialize 4-Digit Display */
  tm1637.init();
  tm1637.set(BRIGHT_TYPICAL);
  /* Initialize led pin */
  pinMode(LED, OUTPUT);
  /* set buzzer pin as output */
  pinMode(BUZZER_PIN, OUTPUT);
}

/* the loop() method runs over and over again */
void loop() 
{   
  analog_value = analogRead(LIGHT_SENSOR);        /* read the value from the sensor */
  /* if the value is smaller than threshold, turn on led */
  if(analog_value < THRESHOLD_VALUE) {
  _handle_led(ON);
  digitalWrite(LED, HIGH);   // turn the LED on (HIGH is the voltage level)
  delay(100);                // wait for a bit
  digitalWrite(LED, LOW);    // turn the LED off by making the voltage LOW
  delay(100);                // wait for a bit
  
    /*repeatedly play the notes if threshold value is not exceeded*/
    for(int i = 0; i < length; i++) {
      if(notes[i] == ' ') {
           delay(beats[i] * tempo);
      } 
      else {
            playNote(notes[i], beats[i] * tempo);
        }
      delay(tempo / 2); /* delay between notes */
    }
  }
 
  _handle_led(OFF);    
  memset(bits, 0, 4);                             /* reset array before we use it */
  
  for(int i = 3; i >= 0; i--) 
  {
    /* Convert the value to individual decimal digits for display */
    bits[i] = analog_value % 10;
    analog_value = analog_value / 10;  
    tm1637.display(i, bits[i]);                 /* display value on 4-Digit Display */
  }
  delay(100);  //small delay so that the number doesn't change too quickly to read
}

/* play tone */
void playTone(int tone, int duration) {
    for (long i = 0; i < duration * 1000L; i += tone * 2) {
        digitalWrite(BUZZER_PIN, HIGH);
        delayMicroseconds(tone);
        digitalWrite(BUZZER_PIN, LOW);
        delayMicroseconds(tone);
     }

}

/* play note */
void playNote(char note, int duration) {
    char names[] = { 'c', 'd', 'e', 'f', 'g', 'a', 'b', 'C' };
    int tones[] = { 1915, 1700, 1519, 1432, 1275, 1136, 1014, 956 };
    // play the tone corresponding to the note name
    for (int i = 0; i < 8; i++) {
        if (names[i] == note) {
            playTone(tones[i], duration);
        }
    }
}

STING: Greenhouse Light Management System