Professional engineer and micro - electronics - Assignment Example

Some of these factors can be controlled by an automated control system designed for a greenhouse as they are some of the main physical factors affecting plant growth and development. Introduction The project aims at controlling the amount of sunlight falling on the leaves thereby controlling the rate of photosynthesis and respiration. The greenhouse system controls the temperature so as not to exceed 500 C a value beyond which enzymes responsible for photosynthesis are denatured. The rate of photosynthesis depends on light intensity and increases with an increase in light intensity during the day.

Light intensity can be controlled during the day the purpose of which is the development of the project. During the night it would be impossible to control light intensity if plants are grown outside the greenhouse while inside this is achieved by controlling the lamps. Keeping photosynthesis rates high at night will cause the plants to grow weak and it is advised to only control this rate during the day. Sometimes atmospheric temperatures drop below the optimum values thereby reducing the rates of plant respiration and photosynthesis.

This means that the yield would be lower than if the plants are kept at optimum environmental conditions. During photosynthesis plants absorb carbon dioxide(CO2) and water(H2O) from the atmosphere and use light energy to produce glucose stored as glycogen and oxygen is produced as a by product. This occurs mainly at night. The processes above depend on enzymes for catalysis and the enzymes require certain temperature conditions in order to operate. At high temperatures(around 450 C and above) these enzymes will be destroyed.

Such is the need to control the temperatures within the greenhouse. From the foregoing discussion the importance of water and light are observed to be very critical to the process and therefore must be regulated. Most greenhouses employ expensive automation designs beyond the reach of most farmers especially those engaging in small scale farming. Also most of these greenhouses are built using complex features that might not suit people with limited technical know how on operating such systems beside increasing their cost.

This design is comparatively cheap and is aimed at eliminating the aforementioned problems. Individuals wishing to engage in small scale farming such as gardening in their back yards can use this system with great efficiency and maximum yield rate. Furthermore, problems such as forgetting to water the plants need not to worry a person employing this system as this is automatically controlled. This system can be utilized in small areas as well as in larger areas where mass agricultural activities are required.

The system is power efficient as a microchip consumes very little power and therefore the cost of electricity is not very high (Nof 2009). The discussion below entails the description of the system (literature review), connection of the system blocks(interfacing), specifications of the hardware used, an assembly language program flow chart, the practical aspects and potential implementation issues in the design and a brief discussion and summary. Literature review The prototype uses a PIC16F88 micro-controller as the the main processing unit.

Its inputs are generated from LM35 temperature sensor, Light Dependent Resistor and soil moisture sensor using a