Plants of any kind bring life and beauty into our environment. Whether they are green or with colorful flowers, the plants on the balcony and in the house bring nature closer to us, even if we live in large urban areas. And air quality is much improved in any enclosed space where there are plants.
A balcony, no matter how small, can be an isle of peace and relaxation when we return home. And in the past months, when we had to spend even more time indoors, we all felt the importance of such a “green corner”. And gardening, even if it only means watering the flowers for a few minutes, relaxes us and frees us from the worries of the day.
Now, however, we return to our hectic lives, thinking about summer vacation and less about our green corner from home, which could suffer because of this. What do we do if we don’t have time, in the evening, to water all the flowers after a hot day? Or what do we do if we plan to go on vacation and do not have reliable friends, who could come at least periodically to water our plants?
In a smart home, there are no such issues. The “virtual butler” VIKI never gets tired and it doesn’t forget to water the flowers – moreover, it knows exactly when to do this and how much water is needed for the plants or the green wall. And if the plants inside do not have enough light (information transmitted to VIKI by sensors), then it will light special lamps, which support photosynthesis in the absence of natural light.
How does it “know”? From the data “collected” by the sensors about light, humidity or temperature.
VIKI can easily maintain green areas such as lawns, green walls in the house or plants on the balcony. Or all of them. For each, it will make the right decision and choose the right irrigation program.
In order to build an efficient watering cycle for plants, independent of the owner’s intervention, a system consisting of a water storage barrel and several irrigation circuits for plants can be implemented. Then, a set of actuators provided with pre-programmed activation or direct control from a computer user interface allows the barrel to be filled with water and the irrigation circuits to be controlled.
If the flow of the water circuit does not meet the amount needed to irrigate the spaces, the garden can be divided into several areas that are irrigated separately in time. The operation of each circuit is programmed, in this case, from the interface presented below.
In the program editing interface you can see how to set the programs that are to be repeated weekly, specifying the days of the week in which we want to activate the irrigation system and the time for each subsystem (tank, irrigation circuit) to be active.
The specific interface for viewing the irrigation system operation provides detailed information on the days, hours and operation of the component subsystems.
The interface for the water tanks control shows the water supply circuit duration when the tank is active.
When the tank supply control circuit is not active, the interface shows the parameters of the last operating state with duration, the start / stop time of the subsystem.
Irrigation circuits display details of their active state and a countdown to shutdown.
When the status is idle, the parameters of the last operating state with the duration and start / stop time of the subsystem are presented.
So, if we have a smart home, we can go on vacation without worries – and without asking friends to help. All we have to do is connect an intelligent irrigation system to VIKI, then we can be sure that the plants are “in good hands”. You can read more about irrigation systems here, and about the challenges that come with a green wall here.