Autonomous Plant Monitoring – Update 2

Progress Update as of 5/2/2018

This week’s progress

The designed parts were 3d printed as shown below. I chose to print with PLA this time since it diffuses quite easily at low temperatures, and the parts stick down nicely on the printing bed. However, I find it more difficult to post-process the parts since PLA is kind of ‘too soft’ as a material, and does not wear off easily when filed. Instead, if filed slowly, it tends to deform to a rough geometry, and when filed fast, it tends to melt down due to high temperature. That’s something new to learn! In the future, I would go for ABS for parts that require a lot of post-processing.

Printed parts, servo on the left, main bracket in the middle, and sensor holder in the right.

As for the circuit, it is worth mentioning that Ahmed Sadriwala was kind enough in helping to make it tidy! I don’t usually care about making circuitry nice-looking (which is a useful skill for troubleshooting). I should probably learn more from this guy. That thing looks beautiful, and it functions as expected. I finalized the code as well, and all seem good so far.

The completed mini-project circuit

Remaining things to be completed

We are almost done here! What is left is to assemble the whole thing, and test the mechanical actuation of the system. Probably fine-tune the code a bit, and that would be it! See you next week for more updates.