Welcome back! It’s been a while. As I’ve discussed in prior posts, I built an NPK and soil moisture sensor using Arduino. That device would update values to the Arduino IDE’s serial monitor. While it was fun building the sensor and learning a lot about Arduino, coding in C, and various environmental issues, it was clear that this build was far from perfect. I had to connect the prototype to my computer and could only read sensor data from the serial monitor. As a product, the prototype just wasn’t convenient to use. I knew that I had to make some changes.

The Project

I chose to improve my prototype for my AP Biology individual summative project. The assignment was to build a prototype that could solve a biology or environment-related issue. I decided to build off of my existing NPK and soil moisture sensor prototype and add a key feature to it. That key feature was cloud connectivity using the Wi-Fi enabled Arduino R4! Arduino provides a cloud service that allows compatible devices to wirelessly connect to the cloud and upload sensor data. This data could then be displayed on dashboards. Implementing this feature would remove the need to connect the sensor device to a computer and read values off the serial monitor. This version of the prototype will allow farmers to plant this device in a farm and remotely monitor the nutrient levels in the soil through the dashboard… from anywhere in the world. The details of my project are shown below.

Future Plans

Unfortunately, I couldn’t get the prototype to consistently work. However, I plan on addressing these issues over the summer and improve the stability of the build. Also, I plan on adding an AI and ML feature that gives users suggestions on how to interpret and act on the sensors’ data.

In the meantime, please check out my other works on this site. I detail my research on the need for sustainable agriculture here: https://theridgeguy.com/the-importance-of-sustainable-agriculture/.