Day 2

 Today was the second day of our Robotic Gardening M-Term! We started the day by doing some research on the three things needed to sustain our robot in the garden: water, WiFi, and power. We learned that our water system needs to produce a minimum force of 25 PSI, which means that we will need a water pump in our rain barrel. For power, we are able to use the existing outlets in the garden area, which means we won’t have to run any additional wiring. However, the issue of wifi did not turn out to be as simple. We tested the wifi in the garden with our computers, and it worked great. However, when we went back inside and installed the operating system for our FarmBot, turned it on, and attempted to connect to wifi, nothing happened. We re-flashed the micro-SD with the operating system, and attempted to connect again, but it just wouldn’t work. After several hours, and a ton of help from our friends in IT, we figured out that the wifi security system that the school uses renders the connection useless for our FarmBot. However, we did find out that ethernet is a viable way to provide connectivity. This does mean that we need to purchase a device that can turn a wireless signal from the school into an ethernet connection in the garden, but it was a relief to finally find a way around this issue. 

We spent the rest of the day working on our bill of materials, a list of everything we would need to complete this project. From the wood and dirt needed for our garden bed to the wifi/ethernet adapter, we created a spreadsheet with all of our supplies and sent it over to Dr. Quillin and Ms. Henderson for approval. Our supplies for the garden bed should hopefully arrive on Thursday, and everything else should arrive on Monday. Overall, today was a bit frustrating, but we were able to sort through our issues, and get some good work done. Attached below are some photos of each activity.


                                                 This is a photo of our garden electrical outlet.


This is a photo of our Home Depot cart, with everything needed to build our garden bed.






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