To realize Linfabeat’s prototype we used two Arduino boards, two computers and the portable device (the “cube”).
Video prototype
Linfabeat prototype’s network works in five steps:
1- plants connected to Arduino#1
2- Arduino#1 connected to computer#1 (the server computer)
3- the server computer connected to the client computer (computer#2) via wireless
4- computer#2 connected to Arduino#2 and to the portable device (audio output directly to speakers, via RCA cables)
5- Arduino#2 connected to the device via electric cables.
(Click on the image to enlarge it)
The size of the portable device (the cube) is very small. We needed to put inside the cube 6 RGB leds, 18 resistors, 6 speakers, a wireless connector and the microcontroller.
This was impossible at a prototype level, so we chose to make the cube real size (3x3x3cm) but with only 6 leds, 2 resistors and 2 earphones-speakers.
The portable device was always connected to Arduino (to control the leds) and computer#2 (speakers played music directly from computer).
Another limitation in the prototype was the number of plants that we could “play”.
The Arduino board has 6 analog pins so we could connect max 3 plants to Arduino: in fact, each plant occupies 2 pins, one for the soil moisture sensor and one for leaf-to-root resistance measuring.
For the prototype we connected only two plants because we could manage only two sounds: the audio output from the client computer is stereo, so we set the sound of each plant per channel (left and right).
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