Team Name
SunSpotters
Timeline
Fall 2020 – Spring 2021
Students
- Nahian Alam
- Ashwitha Kassetty
- Jonathan Macareno
- Esau Noya
- Sam Thomas
- Ruta Vaghasia
Sponsor
Tyler Harrist @ GoVivid
Abstract
PotSpot is an application which takes a 360-degree photo of the sky and surrounding objects and using information of the sun’s path throughout the year, determines the amount of sunlight an area will receive through different times of the year.
Background
Many tools/software/applications that can help with garden planning already exist. SunCalc, a tool which gives the path of the sun at a given coordinate location throughout the year. But this data does not take into consideration the effect that surround buildings, fences, or trees may have on a spot in your back yard. It’s possible to manually measure the amount of sunlight in a spot, but doing so would require constant measurements throughout the day, and doing so repeatedly, need a minimum of nearly 6 months of data for accurate information. To avoid the problem of potentially planting a plant somewhere where it may not receive enough sunlight, one could use a solution presented by a company called Vincross, who has released a robot which they call Hexa. Hexa is an arachnid-like robot whose one potential use case involves putting a potted plant on top of it. The robot moves to a different spot when it detects that the plant on its head has received too much or not enough sunlight. The Hexa robot however has a barrier to entry in its price. Other mobile applications such as SkyView or Sun Surveyor show the sun’s path from sunrise to sunset and display the quality and quantity of the sunlight at a specific location to the user. But a problem occurs if the desired planting spot is under a tree. For this case, the application will show that the spot receives adequate sunlight, but the spot will always be in shade. Studying the limitations of the various tools available in the market, building a mobile application from scratch to calculate the amount of sunlight was decided as advantageous.
Project Requirements
- The user must be able to take images at the specified spots
- The app must have access to the camera
- The app must be usable on Android and iOS devices
- The app must use only the camera for image capture, and must not rely on external cameras of any kind
- The app must have access to location services for coordinate data
- Images produced must be converted to black and white
- The user must be instructed on how to take the images
- All computations must be done locally on the user’s device and must not rely on external services
- Processing should be as quick as possible
- Shade results must be presented in graph/chart form
System Overview
Hardware Layer
The hardware layer represents the physical parts of the user’s phone that communicate with the front-end layer.
Front-End Layer
The front-end layer is between the hardware and back-end layer. It is responsible for the device user interface.
Back-End Layer
The back-end layer connects the front-end and hardware layers. It is responsible for calculating the sun’s path, taking pictures, and using the imagesto output shade ratios that are then sent to the front-end for display.
- Picture Taking System – takes sun path data and camera data to capture images, working in conjunction with the user through the front end in order to do so.
- Sun’s Path Calculation & Overlay – uses the user’s coordinate location in order to generate a list of values that correspond to the sun’s path.
Results
Future Work
In the future, we look forward to expanding the capabilities of the application, such as adding a plant inventory, so that the user can get suggestions based on the sunlight percentage computed. Another feature that can be added is computing the soil hardiness based on the general location of the user.
Project Files
Project Charter (pdf)(latex zip)
System Requirements Specification (pdf)(latex zip)
Architectural Design Specification (pdf)(latex zip)
Detailed Design Specification (pdf)(latex zip)
Poster (pdf)
References
- Yehu Shen and Qicong Wang. Sky region detection in a single image for autonomous ground robot navigation. International Journal of Advanced Robotic Systems, 10:1, 10 2013.
- Vincross.com. 2021. Vincross. [online] Available at: <https://www.vincross.com/hexa>. [Accessed 2 February 2021].
- Robert Hirsch and Greg Erf. Light and lens: photography in the digital age. Routledge, London, [England]; New York, New York;, third edition, 2018.
- Suncalc.org. 2021. SunCalc sun position- und sun phases calculator. [online] Available at: <https://www.suncalc.org/#/40.1789,-3.5156,3/2021.02.02/12:50/1/3> [Accessed 2 February 2021].
- “Solar Pathfinder,” Solar Pathfinder – Solar site analysis. [Online]. Available at: https://www.solarpathfinder.com/#:~:text=The%20Solar%20Pathfinder%20is%20the,with%20a%20low%20startup%20cost. [Accessed: 02-Feb-2021].
