The Dalton files

 Yesterday, I got the opportunity to present my automatic watering machine to a group of engineers from the MTA. It was online and lasted approximately 10-15 minutes, where they asked questions and I explained to them the inner workings and reason for my machine. Today we got a letter detailing how they liked my presentation and how I demonstrated a level of hardware and software proficiency that surpasses that of many graduating college students, which needless to say has made me very happy. I hope I get more opportunities like this in the future to demonstrate my machine that would allow it to make an impact. Below is a slide from my presentation.

 I am happy with the results of this experiment. I feel that working hands on on a project from scratch taught me many things, and that this machine has satisfied its purpose.

 The prototype for the watering system has been tested, and is a resounding success. It has been tested in my garden over a period of a few hours, in dry and moist soil, and has been able to effectively monitor and control soil moisture. If this were to be used in a real agricultural environment, all that's left is ruggedization, but that wouldn't affect the cost effectiveness and the low maintenance nature of the automatic soil moisture monitor. I even think that it would be possible to use solar panels to power the monitoring system to make it even more independent, but that would require more research.  On other news, Lake Mead was able to rise about two feet because of rain. I feel that if I were to continue this project, I can increase that number and help fight against water waste.

 Today I was given a lesson on different types of logic gates in electronics. I found NAND gates to be particularly interesting, as they can replicate all other logic gates. A NAND gate's output is 1, unless both inputs are a 1, in which case it's output is a 0. Theoretically, you can create a computer from only NAND gates (though it would be terribly inefficient.) Apparently, you can also store information using two NAND gates.

 First, the code defines the chip select, the data input/output, and the clock on the ADC0832-N chip. The input and output ports were connected due to the fact that there would never be a time where neither input nor output are high-z. In addition it made wiring simpler. Chip select goes high before going low in order to start the conversion. Then, the data in sets the chip to single, because I am not comparing two values. Afterwards, on the third clock, the chip goes odd. On the falling edge, when the clock goes zero off of the third clock, the chip switches to input. Then the chip loops clock 8 times, while it reads the input. Then, it loops another 8 times while reading the reverse input in reverse, and confirms if the two readings are the same. After this, chip select goes high, severing the conversion, the chip goes output, and the voltage is gotten by multiplying the analog value by 5/255

 I just watched a documentary about how the agricultural industry in Israel was able to develop. More specifically, how it was able to develop from what was previously desert due to how technology surrounding watering systems for farms has advanced. I found out that one of the biggest losses of water for Israel was farming, and that a newly developed technology called drip irrigation allowed for less water to be budgeted towards agriculture. Drip irrigation is a different system of soil moisture management compared to what I've developed, but it certainly seems intriguing with the time that it took to be implemented into Israeli farms.