PlantTalk: A Smartphone-Based Intelligent Hydroponic Plant Box

• Main Authors: Lan-Da Van, Yi-Bing Lin, Tsung-Han Wu, Yun-Wei Lin, Syuan-Ru Peng, Lin-Hang Kao, Chun-Hao Chang
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Published: MDPI AG 2019-04-01
• Series: Sensors
• Subjects: hydroponic planting; Internet of Things; plant actuator; plant factory; plant sensor; smartphone control
• Online Access: https://www.mdpi.com/1424-8220/19/8/1763

This paper proposes an IoT-based intelligent hydroponic plant factory solution called PlantTalk. The novelty of our approach is that the PlantTalk intelligence can be built through an arbitrary smartphone. We show that PlantTalk can flexibly configure the connections of various plant sensors and actuators through a smartphone. One can also conveniently write Python programs for plant-care intelligence through the smart phone. The developed plant-care intelligence includes automatic LED lighting, water spray, water pump and so on. As an example, we show that the PlantTalk intelligence effectively lowers the CO₂ concentration, and the reduction speed is 53% faster than a traditional plant system. PlantTalk has been extended for a plant factory called AgriTalk.