Introduction

Welcome to the first Eduponics mini agriculture kit introduction. During the introduction, we will introduce the Eduponics Mini ESP32 kit, the kit includes the Eduponics mini ESP32 development board. The board features many built-in sensors and support for both WiFi and Bluetooth and It has very low power consumption. The deep sleep features and the variety of sensors enable the Agritech kit to be used in real-life IoT applications.

This page provides you with the basic knowledge and tools to get started and provides you with an agriculture kit introduction for your next IoT open hardware project.

Usually, companies print this type of page as a small manual delivered together with the product. At STEMinds we care about the environment, and one of the ways we support this cause is by saving on unnecessary paper prints.

By having the basic manual and instructions here on our website, we can assure you that we will always keep it up-to-date and working. The agriculture kit introduction should provide you with all the needs to get started, if anything isn’t clear, feel free to contact us for clarification.

Eduponics Mini development board #

Except for the agriculture kit introduction, we shall introduce the IoT development board as well. The Eduponics Mini board is a custom printed circuit board (PCB) that consists of 2 layers with multiple connectors and sensors. This enables the integration of multiple IoT and agriculture-related sensors into a single unit without the need for wires and extra headaches.

On the top side of the board you’ll find:

• ESP32 Micro Controller (already pre-installed with MicroPython)
• Water quantity, soil moisture, and pump XH2.54 interfaces
• Tiny relay that is used for controlling the pump
• ON/OFF Switch
• 12V DC Power interface
• USB Type-C programmable interface (UART)
• Reset Button
• Wake-up button (can be used with deep sleep functionality)
• RTC DS1307 Module (coin-cell battery not included with the kit)
• BH1750 I2C Light sensor
• BME280 Temperature, humidity, and barometric pressure sensor
• Extension for DHT11 / DHT22 sensor (DHT sensor not included)
• AT24C02 EEPROM chip
• IO Expansion pins to connect extra sensors or modules

Unboxing and introducing the agriculture kit #

Once you unpack the package, you will find it contains the following:

• Custom Eduponics Mini ESP32 development board
• 12V2A DC Power adapter
• USB Type-C data cable
• Soil moisture sensor
• 12V Submersible water pump
• Touch-less water quantity sensor
• Irrigation Water hose

All those words might sound like a foreign language to you. However, we can assure you, at the end of the course not only will you understand their meaning but you’ll also be able to control those sensors, program them and make your inventions completely by yourself!

Open-source hardware software #

All our code examples and drivers are completely open source, while our Eduponics mobile app is not open-sourced for security reasons we do provide an MQTT library to control every aspect of the app remotely such as:

• Add and change sensors data
• Change plants name
• Water plants remotely
• Control an unlimited amount of plants

All the code is available in our STEMinds Eduponics Mini GitHub repository

Eduponics Mobile app #

The Eduponics Mini kit can be integrated with the Eduponics app which allows it to be controlled from anywhere in the world using the MQTT communication protocol. This allows users and students to get a sense of real-life useful IoT applications that can be used in our daily lives

Programming languages lessons #

For this kit, we’ve decided to use the MicroPython language which is based on Python3 but designed for microcontrollers.

Python is the most popular programming language that exists today, millions of people use it for automation, AI, websites, and programs that they use in their daily life.

The Firmware we use is generic ESP32 firmware which allows you to program both in MicroPython using Thonny IDE or C++ using Arduino IDE.

We currently officially support MicroPython but we’ve also added most of the examples for Arduino IDE in C++ programming language. In our GitHub repository, you will find other supported ESP32 firmware. That firmware will allow you to program in many different programming languages. We invite you to learn, interact and explore other ways to program and work with the Eduponics Mini kit!