Project Smart Garden

Presented to the University of California, San Diego

Department of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering MAE 154

December 15, 2015

Joseph Brennan Justin Sik Cho Taeha Kim Wei Tseng

Andrew Wilkinson

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1. Need being addressed

With an increasingly busy lifestyle many working class Americans have difficulty making the time commitment into starting a garden, one that will produce vegetables that they can consume regularly. Having vegetables growing in the backyard will help influence a healthier lifestyle by having easily accessible fruits and vegetables without having to leave the house. 2. General Description of Solution

The solution is to create a Smart Garden that would be able to grow and maintain vegetation and fruits in any household. Users would not need prior knowledge in gardening nor a lot allocated time dedicated to gardening. In a society where everything is becoming fast paced, people often do not have the time nor effort to grow their own food at home. The Smart Garden would be able to provide these people with a solution in being able to grow what they want, when they want with ease and efficiency. The Smart Garden will drastically reduce the time commitment required for gardening, requiring minimal effort from the user.

The idea of the Smart Garden is that users would be able to simply purchase our product along with the Keurig style seed pods, which would contain vital nutrients and ingredients necessary for the produces’ growth. By simply putting these seed pods into the the Smart Garden, our product would be able to grow and maintain the life of the produce. Users would not need any prior knowledge on how to garden, but simply know how to use our Smartphone application and the functions of the Smart Garden.

The Smart Garden utilizes a hydroponic system, the growing plants in sand, gravel, or liquid, with added nutrients but without soil. The Smart Garden would also be connected via a Smartphone application, which users would be able to use to see data and analytics of the produce being grown and keep track of its progress.

Through our product, we propose that users would be able to have one green smoothie a day, ultimately providing an alternative to purchasing smoothies at the local smoothie store and also a source of fresh, green produce at your home. Users would not only be able to eat organic,

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fresh produce, but by seeing the growth and progress of their produce, we see users growing a further interest in gardening and its process of natural growth in homes.

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The Design The system is a hydroponic vertical modular garden that will be able to monitor the

nutrients and vitals of the plant and automatically adjust water and lighting conditions, ensuring the plants get what they need. A hydroponic system on average recycles 85% of water, making it the most water­efficient growing style. The basic model is the base and the top, the modular design allows more growing domes to be added to increase growing quantity and each growing dome has the capability of growing 12 plants. The electronic components such as the microcontroller will be housed in a waterproof box with the sensors and nutrient dispensers coming out from it. The middle tube houses 3 inner tubes, one for flow up, one for flow down, and the last to house wires. The water pump, located in the water reservoir will pump water up one of the inner tubes to the top then it will flow down to each module feeding all the plants. Plant → Harvest

This system is going to be plug and play, we will have keurig style seed pods with a variety of plants so that the user can pop it into the system and a few weeks later having a consumable plant.

Integrated Mobile Application

The smart garden will feature smartphone connectivity so the user can monitor the vitals of the plants and control different parameters if a more advanced user wanted more precise control over the growing conditions. The application will also notify the user if any maintenance is needed (i.e. adding nutrients/pH adjuster to the automatic feeder or adding water that was lost due to evaporation). The app will also advise the user when to plant their seed pods so there will be plants constantly being ready to harvest instead of harvesting them all at one time, this is called harvest cycling. It will be able to track the growth of the plant and notify you when they are ready to harvest.

A Juice A Day

With harvest cycling the user will on average be able to make at least one green juice smoothie per day, with the capability of expansion with our modular design based on the user’s needs.

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Juicing Cost comparison

Taking a look at the cost of juicing with produce sourced from a local supermarket vs. sourced from the smart garden we see that in a year there will be savings of $1350.50, which is more than double the price of the basic module, it will pay for itself within half a year.

Produce Cost at Local Market

Cost with Smart garden

Green Smoothie w/ supplies from Local Market

Green Smoothie with Smart Garden

A juice per day for a year cost savings

Kale $1/cup $0.20 /cup $5 / Serving

$1.30 / Serving

$1350.50

Spanich $1/cup $0.20 /cup

Mint $2/cup $0.10 /cup

3. Market Research

For our customer discovery, the team visited local juice bars and interviewed both customers and employees for insight into their eating and juicing needs as well as getting feedback of the concept of our product. The team interviewed 41 people between the ages of 20 and 40, of those 80% juiced at home, 80% were more likely to choose organic over non­organic produce, and 100% of those who don’t garden at home do not because they don’t have the time to commit to gardening. All interviewed said that this would be a useful and helpful product to have. Previously we were considering implementing aquaponics (the use of live fish in a reservoir as a fertilizer) but 72% did not like the idea of it. The vegetables that the majority said they used on a weekly basis were spinach, kale, tomatoes, cucumbers, mint, lettuce, and cabbage. We will first focus on these vegetables before expanding to a wider variety of veggies.

The total available market is approximately 5 billion dollars in the U.S, the serviceable available market is 3.4 billion dollars. The team is looking to tap into the 1.3 billion serviceable obtainable market which includes local juicing chains, local hydroponic stores, and people who juice at home. Initially we believe we can hit .05% of this market if the education content marketing and involvement in the local San Diego juicing community go as planned which equates to 1665 units sold. We are assuming an average unit sold would be the base and top

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module with one add on module as well as 8 6­pack seed pods. From 2004 to 2012 major chains have experienced more than double sales in green juice, indicating a rising trend of juicing. Competitors

The smart garden is a relatively new concept, no large company has released a product of this sort, only startups. No smart garden product has been delivered to the customers at this point, all are either on kickstarter or the backers are currently awaiting their product. There is a decent amount of competition out there but they seem to be lacking key features that we, as a team believe are important. The biggest problem with the existing designs are that a lot of them are tabletop systems and most cannot grow more than 3 plants, making a constant supply of produce impossible. Many designs aren’t hydroponic which are more efficient and allow easier nutrient control. All systems are currently indoor products, we are aiming to initially do an outdoor product until we get all the kinks worked out then we will have both indoor and outdoor modules, reaching a bigger audience. We boast our modular design, we are hoping to be the most productive smart garden out there. Our biggest competition is currently Grove, which just launched their kickstarter campaign this month, they are the only other smart garden capable of growing more than 3 plants and include an aquaponics system but is also by far the most expensive product priced at $2700. We estimate our base system to retail at $250 with each add on module costing $80, with the average price of other smart garden systems with less functionality than our design being $400, we believe that this will be very attractive to prospective customers.

The Links of Competitors/References on crowdfunding

Biopod

https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/2099003506/worlds­first­smart­microhabitat?ref=nav_search

Smart Herb https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/mattiaslepp/smart­herb­garden­by­click­and­grow?ref=nav_search

Edyn

https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/edyn/edyn­welcome­to­the­connected­garden?ref=discovery

CounterCrop https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/548754341/countercrop­the­modern­way­to­grow­your­own­food?ref=discovery

Niwa

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https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/435284672/niwa­the­worlds­first­smartphone­controlled­growin?ref=nav_search

Intellectual Property

Currently basic the basic hydroponic smart garden system of sensing and adjusting pH and nutrients have a patent; we have not yet met with a patent lawyer to discuss a way around this patent but this patent also owned by an individual and not property of a large corporation. We want to patent the keurig style seed pods because there are currently no patents of the sort, an automatically activated pre­packed germination pod, this creates an aftermarket revenue stream as well as keeping with our plug and play vision.

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4. Cost Estimates Product Material List ­ Base

Items Price Items Price

Arduino Uno R3 $2.99 Air pump $4.99

Bluetooth Module $6.97 Water pump $5.99

Liquid PH0­14 Value Sensor Module

$21.93 5M Ultraviolet UV 395­405nm

$3.99

SD Card Module Slot Socket Reader

$2.99 Raw Material $25.00

DS3231 AT24C32 Real time clock module

$1.53 Plumbing, tubing, fitting $5.00

Total $81.38

Possible Retail Price $250.00

The raw material costs are estimated based on single unit manufacturing, and the team is expecting to be able to lower up to 15% for the massive production of 5000 units. Product Material List ­ Add­on Module

Items Price

DHT11 Temperature/Humidity Sensor $1.31

Waterproof DS18B20 Temp Sensor $2.89

5M Ultraviolet UV 395­405nm $3.99

Raw Material $10.00

Plumbing, tubing, fitting $5.0

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Total $23.19

Possible Retail Price $80.00

Needed Startup Supplies More hydroponic supplies (tubing, pumps, air stones, nutrients,etc…) Solar Panels and Batteries More arduino microcontrollers Electrical components (resistors, solenoids valves, sensors) Plants and seeds to test Fabrication facility

5. Project Plan Marketing Risks

Currently our biggest marketing risk is keeping our costs low, we believe if the price of the product is too high it will be harder to be more accessible to a bigger audience. Another risk is educating potential customers about exactly what our product does without confusing them. Many people are unaware of the benefits of hydroponic gardening including faster harvesting time, better fed plants, and water savings. We will have to create educational videos and images explaining the benefits of this type of system as well as showing statistics of how much produce can be produced and how much money can be saved. Being prevalent in the juicing scene is extremely important, as it is our beachhead niche market. Having our product being used in many local juice bars as well as being visible to the customers will expose the product to more of the target audience to this product, we will have to create relationships with these business owners and convince them how our product can benefit their juicing business and lower production costs.

Technical Risks

The biggest technical risk we face is properly integrating the sensors with the automatic nutrient and pH adjustment system through the arduino microcontroller. We are still currently experimenting with nutrients to optimize plant growth. Another technical issue we are facing is the communication with the smartphone application, creating an streamlined workflow environment in which the user can control the conditions in which the plant is being grown. We are also currently working on implementing harvest cycling and the best way to activate the seed pods at different times so that there will continually be plants being ready to harvest. Our design

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is currently intended for a backyard, for development purposes we chose to do this until that design has been perfected, then we can make slight design changes to modify it for indoor usage because there are many more challenges to be addressed for an indoor system. Milestones

January 2016 ­ Recruiting more members, continue research and development, prototype and iterate designs. February 2016 ­ Finish working prototype of base and top March­May 2016 ­ Put our prototype in several early adopters’ backyards and get their feedback, making adjustments to the design as we discover more issues. June­September­ Establish business relationships in the juicing scene, start creating educational content and build website. Source a manufacturer. January 2017­ Launch on kickstarter May 2017 ­ Ship final product

Fully functioning prototype expense

Raw Materials: $300 Fabrication Costs: $200 Research and Development costs: $400 Total Estimated Cost: $900

Project Plan

Team 6 is planning to apply to the Proof­of­Concept pitch competition in UC San Diego Basement startup incubator in 2016 winter quarter. Our team is highly self­motivated in the project, and allocate members’ schedule in order to continue developing until completion. We have a diverse team of engineers with collective expertise in basic design and prototyping, electrical circuit design, and arduino microcontroller integration. We are currently also working with members of Roger’s Community Garden at UCSD with experience in hydroponic gardening. We do plan on expanding our team to specifically add more programmers but if others express and interest and can commit we will be happy to accept people who offer something to the table.

6. Appendix

Donations / Sponsors

Hydroponics Supplies (Local Hydroponics Stores/Companies, Nurseries)

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Electronics Supplies/Software (Hobby Shops, McMaster­Carr, Element 14) Manufacturing Resources (MakerPlace, SD Fab Lab, UC Design Studio) Capital Donations (Contact Local Companies, Crowdsource Funding)