Hydroponic SmartCube Machine

Here we have out SmartCube machine which is just a fancy hydroponic machine that can control various independent variables. We took a semester to just to learn how use it.

This year 2019/2020 we did manage to do our first testing of light intensity on growth rate. Mind you these take about 2-3 months to grow. We had our winter Christmas break then Chinese New Year 2020, but with the Coronavirus outbreak we couldn’t go back to school to do our second round of testing….

Using this foam square to sprout our lettuce seeds first. We found that putting it directly in the machine is too much for the seeds to grow.

Measuring the amount of liquid plant nutrients to put into the machine.

Testing purple wavelength on growth rate of lettuce. I’ll post more pictures of what the inside of the machine looks like later.

Here they are trying to grow. To be honest it was a miracle since there were a few times the machine overflowed by sucking too much from the reservoir even though we controlled the flow rates perfectly…. again flaws in the machine.

Harvesting Day! Also a slightly sad day….

It’s been a long 3 months, but at least a few of the lettuce survived. My students almost gave up in the end because of the unfriendly user interface and issues we had with the machine.

A closer look our first attempt lettuce. There are 3 different types of lettuce, can you name them?

Let’s have a picture, Reap the benefits.

Let’s turn our lettuce into Caesar salad!

The below images are from our second attempt after working out the kinks. We first tested growth rate with white light.
Update: unfortunately because of the Coronavirus we haven’t done our third round of testing. Please stayed tuned.

Published by Deviatorz

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