Introduction

Though the first part of my Terrarium project is made to maintain environmental conditions, the second part is arguably just as important. As the project was originally planned to be able to detect the health of plants, decide which environmental conditions were incorrect, and then automatically adjust environmental conditions to optimize growth, the remote sensing portion is very important.

This portion is still in the prototyping phase, but I have identified several health parameters to measure, as well as the necessary sensors to measure said health parameters. Specifically, NDVI (normalized difference vegetation index), REIP (red-edge inflection point), NCT (normalized canopy temperature), and NRCT (normalized relative canopy temperature) will be used to provide an overall measure of the plant’s health through a weighted multivariable function that relates said parameters to a health “score” that I will estimate by observing the plant’s leaves, stems, growth, and general healthiness. To measure parameters, I am using a simple AMG8833 Arduino thermal camera and AS7341 Arduino 10-Channel light sensor, to report thermals and reflectance.

As of now, I’ve combined both sensors together in a simple case with a 3 color LED, programmed them to capture specific data, and am testing to see whether or not consistent, and sensical, results can be achieved with said sensors.