Initiatives / Sustainability & AgTech
Automated Plant Wall
An automated watering and grow-light system that optimises the growth of a plant wall and brightens public spaces in the Monash Smart Manufacturing Lab.
- Program
- Sustainability & AgTech
- Status
- Deployed
- Project leads
- David Phillips, Molly Cleeve
- Control
- OpenSprinkler
Automatic watering
This project designed an automated watering system for a vertical plant wall containing 30 indoor plants across four species. A filtered pump, poly pipe, directional solenoids and an independent OpenSprinkler control system deliver water according to each plant's needs.
Artificial lighting
Full-spectrum LED grow lights help plant growth in an area with minimal natural sunlight. They run on an automated cycle that avoids disrupting the office environment while maintaining a night and day cycle that respects the plants' circadian rhythm.
Future development
The ability to control 12 individual watering groups and 6 sections of light gives a range of variables for future testing, in particular continuing the computer-vision models for plant health monitoring. The team last year successfully detected leaf health, wilting and some early signs of disease at small scale. This system will let us induce more conditions and collect more data to improve those models.
