My Passion Project
For this year, my passion project was to build an Automatic Plant Watering System using Phidgets. You’ll find more information down below.
Why did I choose this project?
I chose this project, because when I was first thinking of ideas for my passion project, I thought about making something that would help people. I then thought about making an Automatic Plant Watering System, because I thought that something like this could help people save time on watering their plants. I also chose to do this project, because I knew that there would be some programming involved. And, one of the teachers said that I could use Phidgets, which are cool tools that you can use to make projects like my plant watering system.
Here are pictures below of all the Phidgets I used:
Water pump Phidget with a DC motor
(transports the water to the plants)
USB cable with a Vint Hub Phidget
(the code runs through here to give these Phidgets commands)
Phidget wires with a soil moisture sensor
(the wires connect the Phidgets, and the soil sensor detects if the soil moisture is low or high)
The progress of my project
I had to figure out what type of code I should use to program my project. I researched to figure out which type of code would be the easiest to use. I eventually decided to use Python, and I also decided to use the code in this app called Pycharm 2025.1:
I then had to figure out the proper coding I needed to program my system. I also needed to attach all the Phidgets together properly, in order for the code to work.
It was very hard to figure out the correct coding, and errors kept showing up and saying that the code I typed was unknown. I felt pretty stuck, but I was eventually able to find out what the correct coding was to make my system work. Here’s a link below to a picture of my coding:
https://terryfox.sd43.bc.ca/rashaans/passion-project-2024/passion-photo-5/#main
Next, I attached all the Phidgets together, correctly, which was pretty simple and easy to learn. Here’s a picture of what all the Phidgets look like when they are attached:
I then felt like I was in pretty good shape for the passion project, because I figured out the correct coding, which could command my Phidgets to check the soil moisture, and turn on the water pump to transfer water.
The result of my project
We had a mini STEAM fair (not the actual STEAM fair), which was a chance for us to show our projects to the STEAM students and to the teachers. Everything in my project was working the night before that day. But on that day, for some reason my dc motor wasn’t working, which caused the water pump to not turn on. I think that the dc motor wouldn’t work properly, because the wires didn’t fully connect to it. So then I had to kind of push the wires into the dc motor gently, which made the water pump turn on sometimes.
Images of my passion project
Below, you’ll see some images of components of my passion project that will be presented at the STEAM fair.
Below are some images of my poster board:
And below you will see an image of two milk jugs with dirt, and two empty milk jugs for water:
What I learned and how I can improve for next time
Throughout doing this passion project, I learned how to code a little bit. I also learned how Phidgets basically work, and how I can use a few different types of Phidgets. Next time, I will try to figure out how I can use Arduino to program my plant watering system. I will also try to figure out how I can water multiple plants, because right now my system can only water one plant at a time. I really enjoyed doing my passion project this year, and I am looking forward to continuing this next year if I am looking to improve my current passion project.