“Plant Computer” – open-source implementation in Java/Kotlin

Plant Computer is a new, improved open-source version of a computer system for plant replication in a controlled environment. The technology was based on an Internet of Things (IoT) platform, which includes: an automated system for remote monitoring and controlling climate, energy, and plant growth within a specialized, isolated growth chamber.

Intro

The remotely monitored and controlled climate variables were:

• air temperature,
• humidity,
• potential of hydrogen (pH),
• electrical conductivity,
• root zone temperature,
• carbon dioxide level,
• dissolved oxygen in the substrate

and many other variables that could be digitally monitored and controlled within the growth chamber, to obtain different plant phenotype expressions.

Records of cultivated plants are stored in the form of so-called “climate recipes” for future replication, and the computer system got the popular name “food computer” or more specifically “plant computer”.

Usage

Whole plant computer project and all project modules (iotapp) are designed as Gradle project/modules. Therefore, use Gradlew Wrapper ( ./gradlew in both Windows and Linux/Mac) to clean, build, test and run project/modules.

To run Gradle tasks, from IntelliJ one can use Terminal window (be in the root path where gradlew file is located). (Instead of Terminal window, an alternative is to install and use Gradle Plugin in IntelliJ.)

Example:

To run plant computer (as desktop app) in real measurement mode simply use:

./gradlew run

or more verbose:

./gradlew :iotapp:run --args='--simulationMode=false'

To run plant computer (as desktop app) in simulation mode - turn it on:

./gradlew :iotapp:run --args='--simulationMode=true'

(or alternatively use Gradle plugin and set: run --args='--simulationMode=true').

To run plant computer (as web application) in web browser (http://localhost:8080/):

./gradlew jproRun

To deploy plant computer (fat jar generated with Spring Boot) on Raspberry Pi:

./gradlew deploy

then run jar in terminal (> java -jar iotapp.jar) on RPi.

Built With

• IntelliJ IDEA Ultimate - Integrated development environment
• OpenJDK 11 - Open Java development kit
• OpenJFX - Open JavaFX
• TilesFX - JavaFX library containing tiles for Dashboards
• JPro - JavaFX in the Browser library
• Gradle - Dependency management & build automation tool
• Eclipse Paho - MQTT publish/subscribe client
• InfluxDb - InfluxDB time series database

Testing

To run all available Java test:

./gradlew test 
--tests "hr.unipu.A_PlantComputerAppTestJava" 
--tests "hr.unipu.B_UserInterfaceTestJava" 
--tests "hr.unipu.C_RecipeTestJava"

or to run all available Kotlin test:

./gradlew test 
--tests "hr.unipu.A_PlantComputerAppTest" 
--tests "hr.unipu.B_UserInterfaceTest" 
--tests "hr.unipu.C_RecipeTest"

Authors

• Siniša Sovilj¹ sinisa.sovilj@unipu.hr
• Dalibor Fonović¹ dalibor.fonovic@unipu.hr
• Krešimir Pripužić² kresimir.pripuzic@fer.hr
• Nikola Tanković¹ nikola.tankovic@unipu.hr

^{1 = Juraj Dobrila University of Pula, Faculty of Informatics, HR-52100 Pula, CROATIA
2 = University of Zagreb, Faculty of Electrical Engineering and Computing, HR-10000 Zagreb, CROATIA}

References

1. Sovilj, S., Fonović, D., Hager, M. and Kovaček, M. (2022), "Food Computer" – A Demo Platform for Internet of Things Education. 2022 45th Jubilee International Convention on Information, Communication and Electronic Technology (MIPRO), pp. 1454-1460, doi: 10.23919/MIPRO55190.2022.9803354.

License

This project is licensed under the Apache License 2.0 license. See the LICENSE file for details.

Acknowledgments

Plant Computer was inspired by discontinued MIT Open Agriculture Foundation project OpenAg and the exceptional contribution of students Mislav Hager and Mateo Kovaček.