The naked requirements: cleaner water and safer meals with Arduino

The naked requirements: cleaner water and safer meals with Arduino


There’s a handful of issues we really want in an effort to reside, and meals and water comfortably make the listing.

Sadly, our water and meals sources usually are not all the time secure. All through the world — even in developed international locations — air pollution, local weather change, and poor administration are damaging our entry to wash water and meals.

And to make issues even worse, a number of the most typical strategies of cooking and treating meals and water are wasteful and unhealthy for the planet!

Can know-how assist? We expect so. On this article, we’ll discover three alternative ways Arduino can be utilized to drive cleaner, safer meals and water in a extra eco-friendly means.

Allow sensible irrigation to optimize water use in agriculture

Farming would possibly look easy from afar, however the actuality is extremely advanced and difficult. 

To develop crops at scale it’s a must to deeply perceive the situations of your soil, grasp the science of crop rotation, and guarantee your crops have all of the water they want (however not an excessive amount of!) always.

To make this course of simpler and more practical, Problem Agriculture developed Irriduo® leveraging the Arduino platform. 

The answer works utilizing an Arduino Edge Management with the Arduino MKR GSM 1400 for connectivity and firmware, together with entry to a devoted Cloud. It depends on a way referred to as tensiometry, which makes use of sensors to measure the pure pressure of water in soil.

This permits farmers to realize deep, detailed insights into their soil and rising situations. Sensors present readings for six crop cycles of three to 4 months every, representing 1000’s of measurements that may be repeated for years.

You possibly can acquire a greater understanding of humidity, the best way water strikes inside soil, water availability, and rather more. Much more impressively, Irriduo® is ready to react in real-time to altering soil situations to avoid wasting water and maximize effectivity.

Filter microplastics to wash water

Plastic has allowed us to enhance our high quality of life and know-how in numerous methods, nevertheless it comes at a value. When plastic degrades, it tends to interrupt down into tiny items. In the present day, these microscopic items of plastic are in every single place — in our air, meals, soil, and water.

In keeping with a examine by Orb Media, microplastics confirmed up in 83% of water samples examined from metropolitan areas around the globe. These plastics injury the setting and have been linked to regarding well being dangers.

So how can we cope with this drawback? One attainable resolution emerged through the 2022 Pure Robotics Contest, the place pupil Eleanor Waterproof coat designed a robotic fish with a built-in filter able to sucking up microplastics the identical means a whale gobbles krill. 

A prototype of this planet-saving fish, named “Gillbert,” was constructed primarily based on Eleanor’s profitable concept utilizing an Arduino Nano 33 IoT board and another elements. Gillbert won’t be capable to eat all of the microplastic on the earth, and even within the native pond. Nevertheless, testing revealed it is ready to accumulate sufficient microplastic to be analyzed by specialists, which may make an enormous distinction as we try to grasp this drawback and its dangers extra.

As that is an open-source mission, in case you’d wish to strive your hand at creating your personal, you might have every part you’ll want to get began!

Save vitality when cooking, with a wise timer

Making ready meals at house is a good way to economize and use extra sustainable components, however it could possibly additionally rack up excessive vitality payments and improve CO2 emissions in case you’re not cautious.

To make eco-friendly cooking simpler, Italian firm Barilla created a meals timer for pasta primarily based on Arduino know-how. It really works by utilizing “passive cooking”, the place a tool retains observe of the water temperature in your pot and points alerts telling you when so as to add the pasta and when to show off the warmth for essentially the most environment friendly attainable use of vitality.

In keeping with Barilla, this fashion of cooking can cut back CO2 emissions by as much as 80% in comparison with conventional strategies. The mission makes use of an Arduino Nano 33 BLE and a few primary elements, and — better of all — it’s been launched as open-source so everybody can entry all the knowledge they should begin cooking extra effectively at dwelling.

Share your personal eco-friendly tasks!

Have you ever made any energy-saving units or tasks of your personal? If that’s the case, we’d love to listen to about them. Share the small print within the feedback beneath or add them to the Arduino Venture Hub, the place you’ll discover many different examples to maintain you impressed. 



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