Inspiration
Maker culture is a fascinating and ever growing movement in the design community centered around the idea of do it yourself building, manufacturing and design. Maker culture promotes learning-through-doing. “Maker culture emphasizes informal, networked, peer-led, and shared learning motivated by fun and self-fulfillment. Maker culture encourages novel applications of technologies, and the exploration of intersections between traditionally separate domains and ways of manufacturing” (Maker)
The Maker Movement has a long established focus on open source hardware and software deemed sharing culture. Designs and plans are shared online letting people form all over the world collaborate and formulate community driven improvements and solutions without the worry of infringing on intellectual property. This drives innovation forward while letting anyone have access to and innovate on a given product or service. After learning this, it was decided that my product submission for the RESHAPE18 competition should be open source and customizable to allow for maximum and widespread product adoption. 3D printing and using easily available supplementary hardware was the way to go. Designing specifically for 3D printing opened up huge possibilities around fabrication and personalized customizations that don’t exist with traditional manufacturing techniques. This is where the magic and unlimited potential of the maker movement shines.
Concept
ioGrow is an open source, 3D printed, do it yourself platform facilitating the creation of iot enabled green wall installations for home or office. With maker culture in focus the goal of ioGrow is not to be a revolutionary product but rather a refinement and decentralization of existing methods of indoor farming and growing, with a unique twist. Selected ioGrow pods have built in housing for the most popular micro-controller, sensor and micro-lighting technology giving the user endless customization and smart home capability options. For example, by installing light cue pods ioGrow allows the user to establish visual interconnections between their personal data and home environments without being compelled to look at a screen. Using indoor air quality sensors, users can have access to visual cues about the health of their home environments and can even receive visual cues about the weather by connecting their weather apps and light pods to IFTTT software.
The data is in about the benefits of living around plants and foliage. Plants provide a natural way to purify the air in your home or office, absorbing carbon dioxide and releasing oxygen back into the environment improving health and well-being.
“According to researchers at Kansas State University adding plants to hospital rooms speeds recovery rates of surgical patients compared to patients in rooms without plants. Patients in rooms with plants request less pain medication, have lower heart rates and blood pressure, experience less fatigue and anxiety, and are released from the hospital sooner. In a study the Dutch Product Board for Horticulture discovered that adding plants to office settings decreases fatigue, colds, headaches, coughs, sore throats and flu-like symptoms.” (BioAdvanced)
Technology
The Internet of Things is developing at a rapid pace, thanks in part to an explosion in the availability of small, inexpensive computing hardware called micro controllers. These kits are mini computers with processors, wireless chips, sensors and other components in a pre-built, ready to program package. ioGrow pods have built in housing for the most popular micro-controller and smart home technology. This specialized housing is predesigned to fit a wide range of both DIY technology like the Arduino and Raspberry Pi as well as off the shelf products like light meters, humidity and air quality sensors.
Combining this hardware with IFTTT (if this, then that) software the user is able to create countless smart home commands and actions for the ioGrow green wall. IFTTT software is a free web based program that allows all your apps, software and hardware to work together seamlessly. This software allows the user to set up chains of “If This, Then That” conditional statements called applets that can be customized to any smart product or service and works perfectly with ioGrow applications.
Breakdown
By providing the product open source anyone can download the components from the ioGrow website or Thingiverse.com. The economical breakdown for ioGrow is largely determined by the hardware you have access to and the area the user is living in but is affordable. For the prototype of ioGrow all parts were ordered from Amazon and the housing was printed in a local MakerSpace. Thank you for your time.