Caitlin Sheen

The Project

My Spring Project combines my passion for environmentalism with my interest in engineering: for as long as I have been at Athenian, our main lawn has become overwatered and unpleasant to sit on. As the pandemic has made outdoor spaces more crucial for social gatherings, I decided to propose a solution to this problem. By utilizing a solar powered soil moisture sensor to gather data on the moisture content of the East Lawn, generating a recommendation based on the content, and making it accessible to anyone, the school can conserve water.

5.18.21 Final Poster Draft Engineering 1.pdf

Project Poster

A quick rundown of my project.

IMG_7002.MOV

Pitch

IMG_7049 (1).mov

Demo

Code

My code for the demonstration of the project. In the future, I would add a button trigger to receive recommendations, rather than following a timed schedule. Moreover, the Particle would also draw from the weather forecast in order to generate more accurate and informed recommendations.

final code (1).pdf

The Photon

The Particle Photon is a microcontroller with a built-in WiFi chip that quickly and seamlessly connects to the internet. As WiFi can be quite finicky to work with, and created about 90% of the challenges in my project, I chose to work with the board that was the most intuitive (although it still caused problems). Using the Adafruit IO software and the Particle Photon, I was able to efficiently connect the moisture sensor to a webpage.