“Artificial plant with environmental monitoring
India faces significant challenges related to air pollution, with several cities consistently ranking among the most polluted in the world. Among these, a few stand out as particularly affected by high levels of air pollutants. One such city is New Delhi, the capital of India. New Delhi has gained notoriety for its severe air quality issues, especially during the winter months. The primary contributors to air pollution in the city include industrial processes, vehicle emissions, the burning of fossil fuels industrial/construction dust, and the burning of agricultural residues in neighboring states. The combination of these factors leads to elevated levels of nitrogen dioxide (NO2), sulfur dioxide (SO2) and carbon monoxide (CO). These are the gases which are responsible for acid rain and other severe causes.
The consequences of this air pollution are dire, affecting the health of millions of residents. Respiratory problems, cardiovascular diseases, and other related ailments have become increasingly prevalent. Vulnerable populations, such as children and the elderly, are particularly at risk.
We can’t stop this pollution with just one click or one step. But we can reduce this by various methods like recycling plastic materials, using electric vehicles etc. By the way, the pollutants are still in the atmosphere. Sometimes the levels of pollutants go high over the critical level. We can’t sense or predict the levels if we are exposed to that air that will cause badly to our health, especially for children.
So, in this project, I am making a solar smart plant aiming to solve some of these problems. With this solar plant, we can detect/monitor the environmental conditions through our smartphones and computers. Which includes atmospheric levels of carbon monoxide, and nitrogen dioxide. In addition, we can monitor light intensity, temperature, and humidity. The plant has inbuilt lithium-ion batteries which automatically recharge using solar energy, also it has a deep sleep mode, so we don’t want to care about power issues.
- We can place this plant outside of our home and we can monitor the air, we can monitor carbon monoxide and nitrogen dioxide. If it is high, we can either stay inside or we can use gas masks and take other safety precautions.
- The pot color will change to red if any parameters exceed the Hazzard level (we can program that)
- Can be used a garden/greenhouse monitoring, with the help of inbuilt temperature, humidity and light sensors we can monitor these parameters.
- It’s an artificial plant so we can use it as a decorative item (white color led will automatically turn on during nighttime)
Theory and Working of the Solar Smart Plant
The working of this solar smart plant is very simple. The idea is to read the environmental parameters like carbon monoxide, nitrogen dioxide, temperature, humidity and light. Then using a microcontroller these data will uploaded to a cloud service and we can monitor that data from anywhere in the world. Here I plan to use the ESP12E as the microcontroller because it has lots of pins for our application and also it has Wi-Fi and sleep mode capability. I used Arduino iot cloud for remote monitoring because Arduino iot cloud is very simple to use and 100% free. We can use solar panels to charge the battery with the help of a proper charging circuit. We can arrange the solar panels like branches of a plant, and we can place the sensors below the panel. So, the overall look will be like a plant with solar leaves.
Material Needed for Making the Solar Smart Plant
- ADP1706ARDZ-3.3-R7(3.3V regulator) – 1nos
- LTC4054ES5-4.2(li-ion Battery Charging Module) -1nos
- AHT20- (Temperature and Humidity sensor)-1nos
- Dfrobot Mems Carbon monoxide sensor-1nos
- Dfrobot Nitrogen dioxide sensor-1nos
- ESP12E-1nos
- LDR-1nos
- 74HC4051 Multiplexer-1nos
- 3MM LED -1nos
- WS2812B Neo pixel - 5nos
- ON/OFF Switch-1nos
- 10K Resistor-1nos
- 330ohm Resistor-1nos
- K Resistor-1nos
- 10uf Capacitor-2nos
- 100nf Capacitor-1nos
- 3.7v li-ion battery 18650 battery-4nos
- 5v 80mA Solar panel-6nos
- ESP12E breakout board-1nos
- 8pin SOIC breakout board-1nos
- 16pin SOIC breakout board-1nos
- 2pin JST female connector-2nos
- 2pin JST male connector-2 nos
- 3pin JST female connector-2nos
- 3pin JST male connector-2 nos
- Male header pins(strip) -1nos
- Female header pins(strip)-1nos
- Aluminium/copper wire-2meter
- Heat shrink tubes-2meter.
- Plant pot (readymade/3d printed)-1nos.
- 3D printed parts.”