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Project Page

The Project Pages were created in an effort to help promote student projects. The Project Pages provide a showcase where employers, other students, and friends can see what UIUC students are capable of. Many employers, in particular, consider a good Senior Design Project to be just as valuable as internship experience. The Project Pages will develop over time into a valuable library of practical engineering knowledge. Some of the best projects will be identified each semester and placed in the Senior Design "Hall of Fame," while the rest will be accessible by semester and search engine.

Updating Project Information

Once your project has been approved on the discussion board by the Instructor, you should promptly update your project information. In order to do so, find your project on the Project page, and click its title. When a frame expands, click on "Edit." Next, enter your UIUC netid and password. The system will lookup your project and prompt you for information such as your project's title. Please fill in the information that you wish to have appear for your project, and then click on the submit button. The required fields are marked so. You can update this information at any time. We strongly urge you to keep a backup of all of the information, and we would like to caution you of one scenario in particular. If multiple people attempt to edit this information at the same time, the second person to submit the changes will overwrite the first person's changes. Also, be sure to logout when you are done by closing the web browser. It is important that you provide a project desciption. It should be a brief overview of your project and explanation of why it is worth doing. Please provide this information as soon as possible and try to limit the length to about 250 words.

Submit Schedule

After updating your project information, you should proceed to the Submit Schedule page. Here each student should submit his/her schedule so that your TA can schedule a weekly meeting time. We know that there are a lot of boxes to check, but we need this detailed information because of how difficult it is to match schedules. The information is displayed in a convenient way for TAs when it is time for them to schedule meeting times. The system is very intuitive so instructions are not needed. NOTE: Please be sure that the schedule you submit is as accurate as possible, since you won't be able to edit it later!

After submitting your schedule, you should familiarize yourself with the "Upload Files" page.

Uploading Files

This area is used to upload files such as the Proposal, the Final Paper, Images, and additional files. When a file is uploaded, it is renamed and limited to a specified size. Special documents such as Proposals and Final Papers should be uploaded into the appropriate slot and will automatically be added to your Project Page. Images and other files can be uploaded into any other slot such as "file1." To upload a file, simply select which slot to place it in, and then select the file from your computer using the "Browse" button.

Mushroom Growing Tent

Elizabeth Boyer, Cameron Fuller, Dylan Greenhagen

Mushroom Growing Tent

Featured Project

# Mushroom Growing Tent Project

Team Members:

- Elizabeth Boyer (eboyer2)

- Cameron Fuller (chf5)

- Dylan Greenhagen (dylancg2)

# Problem

Many people want to grow mushrooms in their own homes to experiment with safe cooking recipes, rather than relying on risky seasonal foraging, expensive trips to the store, or time and labor-intensive DIY growing methods. However, living in remote areas, specific environments, or not having the experience makes growing your own mushrooms difficult, as well as dangerous. Without proper conditions and set-up, there are fire, electrical, and health risks.

# Solution

We would like to build a mushroom tent with humidity and temperature sensors that could monitor the internal temperature and humidity, and heating, and humidity systems to match user settings continuously. There would be a visual interface to display the current temperature and humidity within the environment. It would be medium-sized (around 6 sq ft) and able to grow several batches at a time, with more success and less risk than relying on a DIY mushroom tent.

Some solutions to home-grown mushroom automation already exist. However, there is not yet a solution that encompasses all problems we have outlined. Some solutions are too small of a scale, so they don’t have the heating/cooling power for a larger scale solution. Therefore, it’s not enough to yield consistent batches. Additionally, there are solutions that give you a heater, a light set, and a humidifier, but it’s up to the user to juggle all of these modules. These can be difficult to balance and keep an eye on, but also dangerous if the user does not have experience. Spores can get released, heaters can overheat, and bacteria and mold can grow. Our solution offers an all-in-one, simple, user-friendly environment to bulk growing.

# Solution Components

## Control Unit and User Interface

The control unit and user interface are grouped together because the microcontroller is central to the design of both, and they are closely linked in function.

The user interface will involve a display that shows measured or set values for different conditions (temperature, humidity, etc) on a display, such as an LCD display, and the user will have buttons and/or knobs that allow the user to change values.

The control unit will be centered around a microcontroller on our PCB with circuitry to connect to the other subsystems.

Parts List:

1x Microcontroller

1x PCB, including small buttons and/or knobs, power circuitry

1x Display module

1x Power supply

## Temperature Sensing and Control

The temperature sensing and control components will ensure that the grow box stays at the desired temperature that promotes optimal growth. The system will include one temperature sensor that will record the current temperature of the box and feed a data output back into our PCB. From here, the microcontroller in our control unit will read the data received and send the necessary adjustments to a Peltier module. The Peltier module will be able to increase the temperature of the box according to the current temperature of the box and set temperature. Cooling will not be required, as maintaining a minimum temperature is more important than a maximum temperature for growth.

Parts List:

1x Temperature Sensor

1x Peltier module

## Humidity Sensing and Control

The humidity sensing and control system will work in a similar way to the temperature system, only with different ways to adjust the value. We will have one humidity sensor that will be continually sending data to our PCB. From here, the PCB will determine whether the current value is where it should be, or whether adjustments need to be made. If an increase in humidity is needed, the PCB will send a signal to our misting system which will activate. If a decrease is needed, a signal will be sent to our air cycling system to increase the rate of cycling, thereby decreasing the humidity within the box.

Parts List:

1x Humidity Sensor

4x Misting heads

Water tubing as needed

## Air Quality Control

The air filtration system is run constantly, as healthy mushroom growth (free of bacteria) needs clean, fresh air, and mycelium requires and uses up oxygen as it grows. Additionally, this unit is connected to the hydration sensing unit- external humidity is in most cases going to be lower than internal humidity, and cycling in new air can be used to decrease humidity. When high humidity is detected, the air filtration system will decrease the internal humidity by cycling in less humid air.

Parts List:

Flexible Air duct length as needed

1x Fan for promoting air cycling

# Criteria For Success

Our demo will show that each of our subsystems functions as expected and described below:

For the control unit and user interface, we will demonstrate that the user can change the set temperature and humidity values through buttons or knobs.

The humidity sensing and control system’s functionality will demonstrate that introducing dry air into the device activates the misting system, which requires functional sensors and a water pump.

The temperature sensing and control system demo will involve showing that the heater turns on when the measured temperature is below the set temperature.

The air quality control system’s success will be demonstrated as air movement coming from the fan enters the tent.

Project Videos