Exercise 3

Exercise 3

Community Garden System (AKA "If Plants Could Talk")

Ideally, this would be a project spanning several years of study, but as a system piece, it directly relates to food production and gardening behavior in humans. The purpose would be to measure variables regarding the condition of individual community garden plots and report those conditions to the user, based on the type of plant they are growing. Then, our portion as observers is to make available this information, and see how the presentation of this information then affects the future gardening behavior of plot renters.

Questions regarding emergence:

- If the sensors report to them when conditions are not optimal, do growers tend to their plants, or do they disregard the message; how long do they wait? Then based on their history of attentiveness or negligence, do they choose to grow something more suitable to their grow habits the next year?

- Based on a history of conditions in other plots, do they decide to grow something different to suit the conditions of the soil instead?

Materials needed:

- Arduino or other micro controller to handle wireless data collection and output to a web server.

- Computer system to host web server

- Program to process and publish the data via the web server

- Soil Moisture Sensors (for each plot)

- Camera (suspended to face the plots top-down, for visual observation of human care of plots)

- Power source for sensors and cameras (either cords into outlets/solar panel/wind turbine, or batteries)

- Rigging Equipment (wood posts, wire Cables, clamps/brackets; used to suspend camera system above garden)