Communicating Soil Moisture with Light and Sound

This project will explore the use of temperature and soil moisture sensors to understand when to engage a drip irrigation system after a rain storm. The project will then evaluate artistic / multimedia ways of engaging people with data to include sound and light for cues as to when watering needs to take place. 

This first chapter summarizes my initial results in setting up a case study. 

Photos of rigs for measuring temperature and soil moisture are included here:

Update: 3/23/2023 

Electronics tested and box mounted on stand-- … just need to add BME280 for air temp/humidity, wire it up, retest, and bury the sensors. Thanks to Bob Cue for help on finalizing the instrument stand as well as helping me with the laser cutter for the plate to mount the datalogger. 

Update: 4/2/2023

Hardware for data collection is tested and complete. Next step is getting the multimedia (light and sound) features integrated around the data that's being collected to help communicate soil conditions.

Update 5/15/2023

Running quality assurance and quality control on logger at this time - minor adjustments mades to sensor readings to match ambient conditions.

Update 6/3: Installed! 

Long-Term Soil Monitoring Installation
https://youtu.be/eBj_6piXdQ8

11/15/2023

System has been reprogrammed for data collection to the Internet of Things. You can see the live data via this link: https://io.adafruit.com/biod101/dashboards/soil-experiment-ambient-shade . This data will be collected for one year to form the basis of the data-driven music and light composition.

The method and code for upgrading the system to IOT is summarized here including links to free code: 

Thanks to Jeremy and Xerocraft (and community donation) for the Adafruit Feather MO WiFi that made this transition possible!