Hydroponics System

Hydroponics is a method to grow plants without soil.As demand of food is increasing, we need to find ways to grow vegetables and fruits in whatever way possible.

Why do we need Hydroponics way of irrigation?

Limitation of land ,weather dependence and transportation cost are the factors because of which we should shift our focus from traditional methods to Hydroponic.Further more, we can grow more than one crop in same  bag has great economic benefits.Research done by University of Florida found that this way of irrigation has profitable too.

In the colder part of the world,it is difficult to grow plants in winter because of lack of sunlight and harsh weather conditions.This method can be used to mitigate these cumbersome problems.
Advantages:
No need of Pesticide and Insecticides
No Soil Required
Crops are easily to transfer
More plants per unit area.
Water stays in the system and reusable.

Procedure:

Do it yourself at home  : This page contains method and procedure required.

Related PDF:

Tulip Hydroponics (1.08 MB)
Master thesis of Hydroponic greenhouse production of fresh market Basil ( 1.49 MB)




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Solar Powered bicycle

Solar bicycle consists of battery,DC-DC boost converter, Solar Panel, Motor and Motor controller.It will get its energy from three places brakes,  pedals of the bicycle, and by solar-cell.


There are three ways you can build solar powered cycle:

a) Build an electric cycle and charge its batteries using electricity provided by solar cells at home. One time charge is sufficient for 9 Miles (15 km approx).If you use this cycle to visit nearby places; this is good option for you.

b) Second method consists of placing both solar cells and batteries on the cycle. Placing solar cells on bicycle itself would help in recharging batteries while travelling.

c)Third one and my most preferred one is to build hybrid cycle whose batteries not only charged by solar cell, but also use energy of regenerative braking and pedaling.




Useful Link:

Solar Electric Bicycle Project
Step by step process of building your own

Speed and Distance Test:


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GSM based Irrigation system

In recent years mobile has become household name. Its reach is wide and anyone can be contacted anywhere using mobile phones. In a last decade we have seen transformation in mobile technology and now it can be used for many purposes and not confined with only communication. Mobile Banking, Photography and Wireless Printing are some of the examples of its distinctive uses.Today, we will discuss that how farmers can use mobiles in agriculture.


Today we will discuss three projects related to GSM based irrigation and in future discuss about their implementation.


How GSM can be used by farmers?

In farming there is lot of trivial task that needs to be done manually by the farmer. If we can give control of this these things to farmer using mobile phone, it would help farmers to save their time and money.

Automation of farming can be done by following ways:

GSM pump controller: Farmers can on or off water pump remotely using mobile phone and micro controller.



Weather Updates using Mobile Phones: Mobile phone will get weather updates in sms form in real time with the help of web server and mobile infrastructure.Implementation of this service requires Agriculture SMS Management system which we will discuss in next post.

Pest Control: The Pest control consists of two components, a remote monitoring system (RMS) and a host control system (HCS). RMS would be used to monitor environment and pests and HCS would store that information into database.

Control Farming Vehicles with Mobile: In the video shown below , you can see how one student control tracker using his GSM Mobile Phone:



Useful links:

GSM Based Automatic irrigation system
An SMS based Rural Application

Related Video:



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Solar Powered Water Pumps

This month we discussed lot of projects about irrigation and how we can make it greener. This idea of solar powered pump is also a part of that series which includes drip irrigation using wind energy and mechanical sprayer.Solar pump is a useful device for irrigation. In my opinion at hot places solar energy is much better than traditional methods because it works during day time and consumes no electricity or any fuel.


Is it viable?

Yes, it has already been implemented in some part of Africa and according to Stanford study it is profitable too.Moreover, according to Science daily article the first solar-powered irrigation system at the U.S. National Arboretum was installed by students from Alfred State College and workshop participants in 2009.

Pumping can be done using traditional method we used in windmill pump, with only difference is here we will use dc motor to power our pump instead of wind.

 

When photovoltaic modules(1800 Watts) are exposed to sun it generates D.C. Power and with this power a 2 H.P. D.C.
mono block pump operates. It is a very useful device for irrigation where water table is around 6-7 meters ( 20-25 ft.)

Related PDF:

Pumping Water for Irrigation Using Solar Energy

Problems with solar pump and their solutions:

a)We can’t use it at night. The only solution of this problem is storing energy generated in the noon to use it at night. This can be done in two ways:

1. Battery Storage: Batteries help you to store solar energy into electrical energy. Amount of needed batteries and size of solar panels depends on the irrigation area. 
2. Store water at height: Here we convert solar energy into potential energy. To pump the water at height you will need large energy. To overcome this problem we can use two solar pumps, one to get water out from the tank and second one is used to transfer this water to height.

b)It is Costly:
Implementation of this project on large scale is costly.1800 Watts solar panel would cost you around $8 890.8 depending upon your locale and government subsidies.
Even though,this technology is costly but it mostly depends on the individual requirements.It can be cost effective if implemented wisely with individual specific requirements such as Weather, Well depth, Storage Tank, Government subsidies etc etc. Moreover with the use of drip irrigation system we will need very less water to pump and proportionally less solar power.

How it works?
Solar energy comes in small packages called photons. These photons hit the outer level electrons in the photovoltaic cells like the flappers hit the metal ball in the pin ball machine. The dislocated electrons form the electrical current. This current is used to power dc motor attached to the water pump.



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Solar Turbine Generator

Solar turbine generators generate electricity in similar way as any other generator; the only difference is that they use sun light in the place of other sources such as coal, wood or petroleum gases.

We had discussed in solar powered steam engines that how we can use sun energy to power our engines. This project idea is extension of that talk.  If we can connect solar powered engine to spin turbine connected to magnets and coil, we can able to generate electricity.


How it works?

As we have discussed in that post how solar energy can be used produce steam. This steam, when connected to steam engine, would rotate the generator to produce electricity.

Usually solar powered steam engines are slow to start and it needs large parabolic mirror even for producing small amount of electricity. Solution of this problem can be hybrid engines powered by both sun light and bio gas. If we put bio gas burner to help sun light to heat water, we would get very efficient and quick to start engine and gradually we can adjust the bio gas supply according to our need.

Though I have seen many solar energy powered steam engine, this hybrid engine(Solar and Bio gas) with steam is unique idea and according to me not implemented yet.



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Bio gas powered water heater

Hot water is essential part of human life. During winters, we all need it for our daily activities such as bathing and cleaning. To boil water we use various sources such as coal, petroleum fuel, wood, gas and electricity but most of our methods release greenhouse gases.

Nowadays, Gas geezers are very popular because of their efficiency.  Gas geezers or water heaters burn gas instead of electricity as their heat supplier. There are two types of gas water heaters: With water storage tank and Without water tanks. We can use any from them but I would suggest tank less heater because using it , we would get continuous supply of hot water and it is energy efficient too.


Advantage of using Gas:

Saves your utility bill and reduce green house emission.

What we are trying to achieve?

If we use bio gas instead of polluting gas such as LPG or Natural gas we would able to control green house emission as well as save some money. Moreover, because bio gas can be produced at home using waste, we perform waste management too. The only thing you need to do is to replace your water heater heat source from natural gas cylinder to bio gas. 

What is Bio Gas?

This is a gas produced by biological breakdown of organic matter. The good news is that it contains 50 to 75 percent of methane which is highly inflammable gas and because of that we can use bio gas to power our heater.

Related Video :

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3UafRz3QeO8

How to build my own bio gas plant?

I had already explained it on my post Bio gas project with some very useful links. You can read it from here.

How to implement?

We will need two tanks , one to containn cow mud and other much larger tank to store bio gas that manufactured. Bio gas is highly inflammable gas, so we would need storage tank open from one side and completely submerged in water with open side facing downwards.

When storage tank started to fill, it would gradually move upward.

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Wind Mill Water Pump

We have discussed Drip irrigation powered by wind mill. I told you to use wind powered pump at the place of traditional one. Today we will move one step forward and find out how? In the meanwhile, I would also share some related videos.  So, let’s begin our journey of windmill pump:

Advantages of using windmill pump?

• It powers itself from green energy.
• According to many estimates, it can recover its cost in 5 years.
• It can be used anywhere, even in areas where electricity has not reached yet.
• If used with drip irrigation, it works automatically without human intervention.

How wind mill pump works?

Windmill revolves with the force of wind and that revolving energy is used to pump the water out from the tank.

Wind mill pump consists of four important components:

1. Wind mill
2. Crankshaft
3. PVC Pipe
4.  “One way valve” right at the bottom of the pipe

Concept:



Windmill rotates crankshaft which push and pull the rod attached in up and down motion. This rod contains in a long pipe with one way valve at the bottom. When windmill pulls the rod, water from the tank get sucked into the pipe, but when it pushes the rod down, one way valve doesn’t allow the water stored in the pipe to return. This way, with the help of continuous up and down motion, pipe starts to fill up and eventually reaches to the height and water comes out.

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Mechanical Creeper for Disable Person

Working below the car is very common among the car mechanics and they do it with ease. Moreover, crawling under the car is very vital for their profession too. But, mechanics with disabilities due to old age or accident, found it difficult to work under it and in some cases, they might lose their jobs.


You can yourself imagine how much difficult it is for a person with disability, to crawl under a car without having support of their legs. This project idea deals with this problem.

This problem has been solved by mechanical engineers of Utah University with their new innovation called mechanical creeper which helps disable to works on their cars again.

How?

Person with disability skid from his wheel chair to our creeper and use control box to adjust creepers position to work below the car.

How it works?

Its working is similar to foldable chair. The only difference is that chair is fold by human energy while this creeper would use electrical energy to do it. It gets its instruction from control panel fitted on the chair. Despite being a small project, its impact would be big and it has potential to change lives of many.

More info

Related Video :

Generating Electricity from Waste water

Tons and tons of waste dumped upon our mother earth each day. This waste not only causes damage to our environment but has health risk too. To use this water again, our governments are using water treatment plants. Project Idea we are going to discuss today would use these plants to power our homes.

How?

We all know that, in nature different materials biodegrade at different rates. It is a chemical dissolution of materials by bacteria or other biological means. Bacteria in the presence of oxygen produce carbon dioxide and water, but when we stop the supply of oxygen they start to produce electrons and protons.  They were first found by Professor M.C. Potter in 1911. When we use them to generate electricity in a cell, this cell is called as Microbial fuel cell.

What is Microbial fuel cell?

It consists of anode and cathode separated by ion exchange membrane. Ion exchange membrane allows exchange of ions between two electrolytes.

We had discussed about microbial fuel cell before. Today we will discuss how waste water can be used to feed the fuel cell while treating it.

How it works?

Waste water is placed in an isolated chamber to stop oxygen entering it, thus compelling the micro-organism to use anaerobic respiration. As a result, bacteria start producing electrons. These Electrons are transferred to the cathode compartment through an external electric circuit, while protons are transferred to the cathode compartment through the membrane. When we put resistance between them, we can produce electricity.
Explanation given in a video below would help you to understand this concept better.



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Solar powered Steam engine

Steam engine brought industrial revolution in 19th century. Moreover, we can say that they were the engine of growth. At present time too, they are widely used in nuclear and coal power plants.

We discussed steam engine briefly in our post steam engine powered bicycle. Today we will discuss how we can produce steam using solar power?

Why do we need to use solar power?

Traditional steam engines mainly use coal and nuclear fuel to power themselves. Each of these methods has their repercussion. Coal powered engine damage our environment and after Japan Tsunami we know that use of nuclear fuel can be dangerous. Moreover, there are other strong reasons too, one of the most important is that sun light is free and abundant while coal and uranium are not.

How this project works?

To understand it, first you should know about how steam engine works?

Steam engines produce steam by boiling water and later use that steam for pushing piston in to and fro motion.My idea is, if we can use energy from the sun, to boil our water and left remaining steam engine intact, it would work exactly like our traditional engine except that our engine is powered by green energy.

To boil water using solar energy, we need a large magnify glass focused on our Solar Evacuated tube.
Evacuated tubes absorb solar energy and convert it into heat for use in water heating.  There are several types of evacuated tubes used in solar thermal collectors.This type of tube is chosen for its reliability, performance and cost effectiveness. We connect this tube with our engine using pipe and pass steam through it.


When lens of a system receives sun light, it direct it to the focal point which is our evacuated tubes.This process starts to heat these tubes.When we pass water through them,it converts into steam which we later use to power our engine.

Required Material:

Fresnel Lens
Solar Evacuated tube: Evacuated tubes absorb solar energy and convert it into heat for use in water boiling.

Useful Links:

Engine Plans

How to build one?

Toy Steam engine video:

Does it really works?



Related PDF :

Power generation using steam turbine

Soccer Playing mini Robots

Football doesn’t needs any introduction, it is one of the most famous sport every played on earth. This game had taken giant leap when played by robot. I have seen that in any robotic engineering competition, game of robots football is inevitable.

 Robot Football requires smart movable robots that need to act as a team in real time and adjust in a very dynamic environment to accomplish definite objectives.It is very complex topic, but I would try to share basics of this project with you.


Concepts:

Artificial Intelligence: While playing football robot would face new challenges, you should have knowledge of AI to program it in such a way that it can take its own decisions according to the situation.

Real time image processing: It is self explanatory, that why we need that.

Autonomous systems: It’s up to you which type of robot you want to build, fully autonomous or computer controlled one.

Mechatronics : It is a science involved with both Mechanical and Electronics. Without having knowledge of both you would not able to move forward with this project.
Required Material:

Lego MINDSTORMS NXT Series

It is extremely helpful in removing complexities, because without it, you would face hardware constraints and lose focus from your primary goal.MINDSTORMS kit includes NXT Brick, Microprocessors with Bluetooth, Servo Motors, Light, Touch, Sound and Distance sensors.

 Required Programs:

LEGO MINDSTORMS NXT: It is a drag and drop software and developing programs with this new software is fun and easy. It comes with building instructions and programming guides to easily begin constructing and programming with MINDSTORMS NXT robots.

Realterm: Realterm is a terminal program specially designed for capturing, controlling and debugging binary and other difficult data streams.

Useful Link: 
IIT Kanpur Micro Robot

Related Video:

 

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Robotics Project

Fruit Picking Robots

Rough sketch of fruit picker robot using Microsoft Paint            

Have you seen large fruits garden with lots of fruits. For a fruit gardener, it is extremely important to harvest fruit in time. In a large garden there is need of many people to select which fruit is ripen enough to pick out and which doesn't?


It is time consuming process and if not done in time would cause wastage and money loss. This project idea is about fruit picking robot which not only work as a fruit picker but smart enough to pick only those fruits which are ripen enough.

Level: Difficult

Challenges:

Fruit picking is more complicated than it appears. It is extremely difficult for robot to pick correct fruit without causing any damage to the surrounding.It involves many concepts and technologies to complete this task effectively.

Robot should have following capabilities for fruit picking to work:

1.  Image Sensing
2.  Reach to every part of tree
3. Movable Platform
4. All data about surrounding
5. Box to put all fruits

How to build one?

Even though I have discussed most of the above concepts in this blog at separate posts but this project needs to use all of them at once.

Image Sensing:  Our Robot needs to sense the environment and takes decision accordingly. It is very important because without it we can’t find out exact location of fruit as well as whether it is ripped or not.

Reach to every part: To maximize reach of our robot, we would build many flexible arms on each side of it. Arms of our robot would be flexible enough they not only pick fruit from anywhere on the tree, but they would not cause any harm to surrounding objects. Technically we need more degree of freedom with our arm. Some Stanford students achieved it using Visibility Graph Search and Inverse Kinematics .Details of their project is available here. http://ai.stanford.edu/~mitul/btp.html
Related Post on this blog:
Robotic Arm with Gripper

Movable Platform: Platform of our machine should have capability to revolve 360 degree, without it we would not able to gather information about the surrounding. To build your platform, you would need Motor drivers, Navigation system, Motion planner, and Robot Controller

Box: It is a place where robot would put its fruit after picking them. It would be at the top of the machine.
 All data about surrounding: Data interpretation about the surrounding is important because without it we would not able to move forward in correct path. You would get details about path finding in following links:
Vehicle pathplanning in three dimensions using optics
Autonomous Pathfinding

Related Video :


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Mechanical Sprayer

If you know about farming, pests cause more damages to crop in comparison to any other factor. One of the solutions for this problem is spraying pesticides. Pesticides have their advantages as well as disadvantages. Which type of pesticides is good for nature is altogether different topic and we would discuss about them later. All we know is spraying pesticides is one of the most pertinent things in farming.

I hope you have seen people spraying in the farms; they use electrical or fossil fuel sprayer to spray pesticides on the field. Today, we will talk about alternatives such as mechanical sprayer.

What is mechanical sprayer?

It is a machine which is used to spray pesticides on crops using concepts of hydraulics as shown in video.

Concept:

We discussed Pascal law in our post Hydraulic Car lift. We would use same concept here. Mechanical Sprayer consists of small cart, drum, pipe and sprayer itself. It works like a steam engine but in exactly opposite way. Here, when we move cart forward, wheels of cart revolves and push piston in downwards direction. This downward motion of piston push pressure on water and as a result it comes out from the sprayer.

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Wind Powered Drip Irrigation System
Bicycle Sprayer 

Wind Powered Drip Irrigation

Whenever, I visit any nearby farm land, one thing I notice mostly is its dependence on continuous water supply. Some areas have sufficient water but in most of the places, I found that they are heavily dependent on ground water and rain. Moreover, many people still use traditional methods of irrigation due to which large amount of water get wasted.


Agriculture has become very vital with continuous increase in world population. Population affects agriculture from both ends, firstly by creating shortage of land to create houses and industries for new generation and secondly by increasing food demand.

For shortage of water, drip irrigation is widely popular. But, it depends greatly on electricity. This electricity is either provided by government or produced by fossil fuel generators. In my opinion, both ways are costly and pollute our environment too.

What’s the solution?

When problem is of that large scale, it can’t be solved by one solution.Therefore I decided to write series of project ideas related to this topic in coming months. Today, my focus is on drip irrigation using wind power.
By analyzing all facts, I found that to increase production,we need to utilize every available resource and for that we need to shift our focus to the land which is bare because of water shortages.To use these lands, we need water. We should save water using drip irrigation at places where it is available at abundant and divert it into water scarce areas.

How we can do that?

• 1. Promoting drip irrigation to all the places irrespective of water shortage or not : In last 10 years, drip irrigation has become very popular and affordable too. Governments in many countries started to give subsidies to make it more attractive.
• 2. Using renewable sources of energy in agriculture: In my opinion, if we use renewable energy, like wind, to power our pump. It would make drip irrigation more popular in areas where electricity is not easily accessible and fossil fuels are too costly.

How?

Before, I tell you anything, you should know about how drip irrigation works?

These video would help you understand that:


My solution is very simple. I am suggesting you to just replace pump used in this system with windmill pump. These pumps use wind energy to pump water out. Read more at windmill pump project.

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Nitro Powered mini RC Car

We have discussed RC Cars before with electric engine and stirling engine. Today we are going to talk about Nitro Car, which has more similarities with cars we use in our daily life.

So, what is Nitro Car?

In my own simple definition, it is a car which runs on fuel consist of methane, nitro methane and oil.It has small internal combustion engine which gets it spark from glow plug powered by batteries inside a car. For more detailed info you can anytime refer to Wikipedia.

What is Glow Plug?

It is similar to spark plug, a helical wire filament usually made up of platinum, but mostly used in small cars. It gets its spark from batteries, compression heat and catalyst effect of methane and platinum.


What’s the difference?

It gets it power from fuel unlike electric cars which use batteries.It has speed and torque which other small cars find difficult to match.

Why should I build one?

It gives you first hand expertise in building a car which has strong resemblance to real world cars. Its combustion cycle is similar to petrol cars. It uses glow plug to ignite a fuel, parallel to spark plug in petrol engines.

Because of all above likeness, it would be great learning curve for all those interested in automobiles.

Problems:

• Some time engine gets overheated and can damage itself. We should keep our close eyes on engine temperature. 
• Tires wear down quickly, because of car speed and drift. Moreover, they are expensive too.

Engineering Branches:

Mechanical and Automobile

Things I need?


Related Video:



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Stirling Engine Mini RC Cars
Computer Controlled Car

Stirling Engine mini RC Car

We had discussed both Stirling Engine and Remote control cars in two separate posts.  In this post we will combine these two technologies. Before we start our discussion, I would briefly describe both of them.

Stirling Engine

1.Piston 2. Displacer, Hot gases in the left side of Heat displacer, push it forward to move piston. 

It is an external combustion engine where combustion occurs outside the engine itself. An advantage with this engine is that, it can be used with any type of heating source both renewable and non renewable. Basic form of engine consists of one cylinder, hot at one end and cold at the other, loose fitting displacer, power piston and flywheel.

When we heat at one end, gas starts to expand and push loose displacer forward, which is connected with piston which eventually revolves the flywheel. With its revolution it pushes back the fitting displacer to its original position having cold gas at both ends again. This cycle continues till the heat is supplied from heat source.

RC Cars

These cars are usually powered by electric batteries can be controlled by remote control. It consists of three components, transmitter (our remote), receiver (which receives transmitter signal) and car itself. Transmitter role is not only limited to receiving signals but it also transforms these radio waves into electric signals and controls the components. Most of these cars use Amplitude modulation but some newer once also use Frequency modulation. If you have never heard about modulation, our fm and am radio works with same transmitter, receiver concept. By the way, frequency most often used in mini remote cars is 2.4 GHz.

RC Cars itself is a big concept and out of scope for this post, for this project idea, I would rather recommend you to buy an RC car from toy store and install our engine on it. If it works, then you can shift your focus to build one car by yourself.