An exchange project has been set up between Universcience and the Cluj Cultural Center in Romania, as part of the France-Romania season. The first part of this exchange consists of a FabLab residence of two Romanian Biologists from the University of Agricultural Sciences and Veterinary Medicine Cluj-Napoca, who, together with the Carrefour de Numerique team, will work on building up a fully automated terrarium. The residence runs from March 19th to 23rd.

Once the Terrarium is in place, the objective of the residence is to be able to check & register the parameters of soil & air humidity, air temperature & ventilation as well as light intake of the terrarium and to build up an automatized system for watering, heating/cooling, lighting and air flow in the terrarium.

The system will also be used to study different aspects of the Terrarium Eco-System. How do plants affect each other, what is the correlation between humidity, temperature and light intake, what are the optimal humidity, temperature and light values for a favorable plant growth?

The second step of the exchange project will be concerned with setting up a web application for controlling the Terrarium remotely. For example, when we go on vacation, we stop watering our plants and turn off the heat. The temperature dropping and the humidity decreasing over a longer period of time, could be dramatic for the plants. Controlling the terrarium remotely over the phone or computer could save a lot of plant lives!

Terrarium

1- To set up the terrarium technically, you will need :

• A terrarium > can be found in any petshop or you can recycle an old aquarium by adding a piece of glass on the top.
• Clay balls > to cover the terrarium floor (1st layer).
• A piece of polystyren > glue the openwork plants' pots on it. We used a glue gun to do so.
• Plants > Choose dwarf plants, they won't grow too much (ask when you buy it). Examples : Fittonia sp, Syngonium sp, Pilea cadierei Sil, Nephrolepsis sp, Ficus pumila sp.
• A piece of filter tissue > to cover clay balls and a part of the polystyren and pots (2nd layer).
• Soil > This is the 3rd layer. Find a a kind of soil made from sphagnum moss. A soil with a little bit acidity (here PH 4.8) encourages plants growth.
• Moss to clover everything (4th layer).

Electronic part

We choose to use arduino to control

• the light
• a computer fan
• an air humidity and temperature sensor > DHT 22
• a soil humidity sensor

1/ Light

We use RGB LEDs that have one commun cathode.

Arduino program : rgbled.zip