Switch Activated Plant Watering System

Built a accessible plant watering system for students at South Shore Eduction Collaborative (SSEC)


The Need

An accessible garden watering system is needed for a local school that allows disabled users with limited fine motor skills and use wheelchairs or gate trainers to help water garden beds in their greenhouse. The school has an outdoor garden which children ages 3 to 21 help water. These individuals may require a wheelchair, giant trainer, or standing frame while participating in the gardening effort. However, the current setup poses difficulties to the individuals with carrying the hose, navigating through the garden, grasping the hose, and squeezing the handle of the hose to create water flow.

The Solution

Our client need this device be able to hold by student, so the size should not be too big. To overcome this constrain, we chose the smallest plastic electrical magnetic valve we found on market and use pla for our shell. In order to waterproof, we tried our best to use mechanical structure to control instead of electric components. As the result, we only have 3 electric components, battery, electrical magnetic valve, and button. All other stuff will be 3D printed PLA materiel, which keep this project from damage of water. Moreover, all wire connectino was covered by heat shrink tubes so they won’t be damaged by water.

For the electrical aspect of this project, the usage of electrical components is limited in order to achieve the goal of waterproofing. It mainly uses an electrical magnetic valve to control the water flow. Considering the storage safety, we decided to use AA battery as the power source instead of LiPo (lithium polymer) battery.


The Team

  • Ao Ruan

  • Yide Song

  • Hanchen Liu

  • Neha Joby

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