Computer science, horticulture students collaborate to improve greenhouse monitoring

Horticulture and computer science interests colluded again this fall, continuing a collaboration begun last year to improve a monitoring system and better maintain plant life in Northwest Missouri State University greenhouses.

Students in the University’s Internet of Things course, with Associate Professor of Computer Science and Information Systems Dr. Nathan Eloe, demonstrated their projects Wednesday for faculty and staff at the campus’s Horticulture Complex.

“They’ve done a really good job, and I think they’ve pulled in a lot of the lessons that I was hoping that they would get,” Eloe said. “Even when hardware was failing, even when things weren't working, they were still learning. They were still figuring things out, and that’s the most important thing.”

Eloe began the project with students last year after a discussion with Dr. Alex Taylor, an assistant professor of agricultural sciences, about the need for a modern platform in the greenhouses to replace the complex’s antiquated monitoring system.

The students worked in teams to enhance a network of sensor platforms that collect real-time data related to temperature, humidity and light within the greenhouses. The data is dispatched via notifications to staff in the Horticulture Complex’s base station, helping them better monitor conditions and ward off any threats to plants if the environment deteriorates.

This fall, teams took lessons from last year’s work to implement new wireless communication protocols designed for a wider range with sensors housed in enclosures that are better suited for the greenhouse environment. Teams noticed last year that some messages were lost in the space and sensor boards were damaged over time by humidity.

“We started from scratch from an implementation standpoint,” Eloe said. “It’s new hardware, new radios, new everything, but a lot of the lessons that Dr. Taylor and I worked with or learned last year, we pulled in this year.”

The alterations appear to be working well and providing more reliable data, Eloe said, and the process has helped students better understand the value of troubleshooting. 

“You’re exploring a space that’s unfamiliar to everyone who’s working on the problem,” Eloe said. “You don’t get too attached to one solution because it might not work and you might need to try something entirely different. You build things to fail early so you can fix it.”

Aaron Hall, a senior computer science major from Kansas City, Missouri, and his team set up sensors to monitor soil humidity in a series of potted plants. The sensors read soil humidity values and send updated data to the base station every 10 to 15 minutes.

“I thought it was really interesting because this is my first foray into IoT programming and deploying a project of this scale,” Hall said. “I was really excited to be able to work on something like that and get more knowledge into something that I hadn’t really been able to do before.”

Dami Popoola, a graduate student studying applied computer science, meanwhile, was part of a team that set up light and heat sensors to monitor temperature.

“It was good to gain practical experience working on boards,” Popoola said. “It was better to work on something that we had to conceptualize and visualize. I love this class. I wish I took this class during undergrad.”

Students added a component to the monitoring system this fall that tracks the temperature and pH levels of the Horticulture Complex’s fish tanks. Ben Zornes, a senior cybersecurity major from O’Fallon, Missouri, was part of the team that worked on that piece of the project.

In addition to helping to solve problems with greenhouse staff, Zornes said an aspect of the project he enjoyed most was the opportunity to work with the sensor boards and learn some fundamentals of electrical engineering.

“Having a project like this under your belt really helps to get you something to point employers toward and say, ‘Hey, I worked on this. I know what I’m doing,’” Zornes said. “It helps us learn the process of collaborating with other people, specifically with clients, which is really good experience to have, as well as with your fellow coworkers – in this case, team members, being able to work with them to solve these problems that they’re having.”

The project was supported this fall by an Improvement of Teaching and Learning Grant, which enabled the project within the Internet of Things course as well as Taylor’s supervision of students enrolled in an independent study to foster the interdisciplinary collaboration.

“The students faced some unique challenges – both technological and environmental – this year as we made architectural changes based on the lessons we learned last year, and watching them come together at the end of the semester has been rather exciting,” Eloe said.