M5STACK-NYP Engineering Exploration Project Winners Announced: Meet the Top 4 Teams
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Recently, Nanyang Polytechnic's (NYP)announced the four winning teams for the M5STACK-NYP Exploration Project.
NYP Diploma in Electronic & Computer Engineering has developed an exciting new course that challenges students to design innovative smart technology solutions for retail, urban farming, smart factories, and healthy lifestyles using M5Stack's products and platform. The 30-hour course is divided into four parts, with a focus on learning about M5Stack and the UIFlow IDE, programming with IoT controllers and sensors, completing assignments and quizzes, and creating group projects.
As a partner and supplier of software and hardware for this course, M5Stack is thrilled to see the creativity and enthusiasm of the students and believe the benefits of this course go beyond improving learning and increasing students' employability since it also creates opportunities for future technological advancement that will make the world better.
In the following paragraphs, we will introduce the top teams' projects and show how they have used M5Stack's technology to create amazing solutions for some of today's most pressing challenges.
Smart Energy Efficient Urban Farming
Electricity tariffs in Singapore are rising, and research has shown that factors such as artificial light, plant competition, overwatering and humidity can affect plant growth in urban agriculture. In light of this, this project aims to develop sustainable and energy-efficient practices to address these challenges and promote environmental sustainability in urban agriculture.
To achieve this, the project includes several innovative technologies, such as a height checker that uses a TOF sensor to measure plant growth and plots the data on a dashboard. An automated sunroof adjusts the amount of natural light entering the greenhouse using a light sensor, while a moisture sensor monitors soil moisture levels to prevent overwatering. The project also features an air conditioner that uses the ENV II Unit to regulate temperature and humidity levels in the greenhouse.
Urban farming has become an increasingly popular way for people in urban areas to grow their food, but it also comes with its own set of challenges, including pest management. Traditional chemical insecticides can be harmful to the environment and can contaminate the food grown, making it necessary to develop alternative pest control methods.
This project aims to address the challenge of pest management in urban farming without relying on human intervention or chemical insecticides. The project utilizes M5stack’s iot controllers and sensor, to simulate an automated pest control system that could be developed to effectively manage pests in urban farms.
It includes an antenna system and a robot to detect and eliminate pests. The antenna system has an automated water sprinkler that sprays garlic-infused water, which is a natural repellent, and produces ultrasound waves that some pests find irritating. If a pest that is resistant to garlic water and ultrasound is detected, the antenna system signals the robot to eliminate the pest.
The robot acts as a natural deterrent to birds and has flashing lights and vacuum guns to eliminate pests. The project offers an alternative solution to traditional chemical insecticides and promotes natural pest control in urban farming.
Many commercial urban farms are closed systems, meaning there are no natural pollinators such as bees, butterflies, and birds to provide pollination to crops that need it. This can result in inefficient manual pollination methods being used, which may decrease crop yield and quality.
The project aims to solve the issue of pollination in commercial urban farms by using sensors to integrate bees into farms and optimize pollination rates while tracking the health of bees automatically.
To achieve successful integration of bees, the project focuses on two key areas: high crop yield and automation. The solution for achieving high crop yield involves a checkpoint system that counts the number of bees and manipulates their movement to achieve optimal pollination rates. The solution for automation involves using sensors to monitor the temperature and humidity of the beehive and indicating the health of the bees using an LED.
Challenges in urban farming include fish deaths due to toxic ammonia levels from fish waste, difficulty growing certain foreign plants due to inadequate weather conditions, mass crop deaths from inconsistent watering in soil-based vertical farms, increased expenses and prices due to manual monitoring of plant and fish health, and reduced crop yield from pest and disease outbreaks.
This system helps urban farmers remotely monitor internal conditions in their farms without needing to manually do it themselves. By measuring ammonia levels in fish farms, moisture levels in soil, and overall temperature and humidity, Urban Farming Overseer allows farmers to quickly identify suboptimal conditions and notify personnel to arrange for more efficient maintenance.
