Category: Uncategorised

It’s finally done and works great! I was able to get my Arduino IOT account working and operational. I was even able to get the IOT app and control/ monitor my Arduino garden remotely!

I had Ross Prevost from Esquimalt High help me create a Gary Oak planter box which is was a great help. The Gary Oak really compliments the Camas that I have planted in the one compartment. This relationship is massively significant to the indigenous people of Vancouver Island and creates a great link to that curriculum.

Overall the project was a lot of work, but really cool to see it working! I’m not sure how much I actually learned about electricity, but I learned a lot about woodworking, coding, and planting!

As I have been building my self monitoring garden I have began to use the Arduino IOT service. This is a free wireless service which allows me to wirelessly manipulate and store variables which are connected to my new Arduino MKR1000 board.

This has proven though to be quite a hassle though, for I am unable to get the software to cooperate and fully manipulate the variables on the board.

I need to step back and attempt to just turn an LED on and off as opposed to wiring up all my plant monitoring variables right now. The state of my board is a little hectic, and from what I have learned in previous blog posts; may be a hardware issue. Thus I need to simplify the process, find success in a simpler board, and then progress.

So after hours of tinkering and running different baseline temperatures I found out my problem. My LED pin was backwards. The cathode was where the diode should have been. This was super frustrating, however that was soon lost when the temperature gauge began working! Pretty cool to see it actually respond to my body temperature.