THIRUVANANTHAPURAM: Have you ever wished to own a home garden, but could not realise the dream due to space constraints? For city dwellers, who don't have the time, know-how and space to garden, Edhal, started by a group of youngsters from College of Engineering, Thiruvananthapuram provides the perfect solution, allowing residents to grow plants without soil, fertilisers and minimal water. 

Akhil Thankachen, the brain behind Edhal, says they apply the hydroponics mechanism. It is an easy to use IoT solution which makes use of automated smart pots. “I wanted to promote urban gardening as people still shy away from cultivating plants since they think it cannot be grown in small spaces. I personally worked on this project for two years. To make the process easier, I automated the pot, connecting it to an application with the help of IoT.” 

 The smart pots can be used to grow varieties of plants. Gokul Krishnan R, Sangeeth Jayan, Joe C Jose, Mohammed Mustafa and Basil Mathai are among the founding members.The balanced incorporation of hydroponics with the IoT enabled sensors helps in monitoring the plant environment and sends the data to the cloud where the information will be processed and the correct feedback suitable for the perfect growth of the plant will be given to the system.

“Dwarf plants can easily be grown using this technology. The growth of the plant can be controlled naturally with the use of pesticides and fertilisers,” said Akhil. The cloud and application together makes use of the data collected from the sensors deployed in the pot which monitors the parameters such as intensity of light, temperature, Ph of water, availability of nutrients and the correct aeration to the roots that influence the quality and healthy growth of the plant.

The pot can be visualised as a plug-and-play system where users can simply plant the desirable seeds in the hydroponic apparatus. The pot is connected to a variety of sensors and to the cloud via the internet. It also comes with built-in wifi support to integrate with the users' local internet connection. Nutrients required for the plant can be provided in a nutrient cartridge which gets dissolved in the water according to the requirements of specific plants.The team is working on the prototype with the help of Innovation and Entrepreneurship Development Centre (IEDC) and believes 'Edhal' will attract more people to farming.