About Me

1:57 AM by Nancy Guo

My name is Qianyue Guo and I am a senior at Union College. I am pursuing my bachelor’s degree in Electrical Engineering with minors in Mathematics and Asian Studies.

My senior project is to upgrade the watering system at Schenectady ARC Maple Ridge Center. The Schenectady ARC Maple Ridge Center is a local chapter of NYSARC, Inc, which is a non-profit organization dedicated to supporting individuals with intellectual and other developmental disabilities and their families throughout New York State. The greenhouse plays a significant role for the development of ARC because on the one hand ARC is partially funded by the plants that are sold, i.e. the local airport purchased their big plants from ARC, while on the other hand, the individuals are being trained when they are engaging in the greenhouse work.

Currently the watering system at ARC not only does not work properly, but also is extremely time consuming. The ARC now only has a hose with two Y-connected Nozzles. The one that goes to the overhead baskets does not work. The other one that waters the seeding tables has two exchangeable wands for watering the greenhouse. One of the wands is for misting, which increases the moisture in the air, and the other one for soaking, which delivers water into the soil. Either way, the wand has to be carried by someone and watering the whole greenhouse could take up to 2 hours every time. It is exceptionally time-consuming and especially for individuals who cannot hold the wands on their own, they require hand over hand supervising. Hence, it can cost at least double the time and labor force. Therefore, the upgraded system must be able to be used by all of the individuals and their supervisors.

The purpose of this project is to upgrade the current watering system at ARC. The system would be mainly operated by the individuals and sometimes their supervisors at ARC. Hence, the accessibility to the individuals is crucial to the project. The users would be ideally able to operate the system simply by pressing pushbuttons on a 12-button keypad. The system would also be able to run automatically on weekends and holidays or whenever the people at ARC are occupied. Moreover, the watering delivery system would be upgraded in order for a better functionality. Lastly, soil moisture sensors would be implemented to ensure that the plants get watered properly.

 

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