Case study 03 · Engineering design

TerraFlow

A four-person engineering project designed to make consistent plant care easier through environmental sensing, automated watering, and a desktop interface.

Team4 students
TimelineMar–May 2023
My focusGUI + system integration
ToolsPython, Tkinter, Arduino

At a glance

Team output
A student plant-care prototype combining sensing, pump hardware, and a desktop interface, documented in the original team poster.
My contribution
I built the Python/Tkinter interface and worked on hardware-to-interface data exchange and integration.
What remains
This was a four-person prototype, not a finished commercial system. Fully reliable two-way remote control remained future work.
TerraFlow system diagram connecting environmental sensors, a microcontroller and pump, and the Python/Tkinter interface
System overview redrawn from the team’s 2023 documentation. This is an explanatory diagram, not a product rendering or a redesigned interface.

Goal

Plant owners often struggle to maintain consistent watering and environmental conditions. TerraFlow combined a soil sensor module, a reservoir with electronics and pump, and a user interface so the system could monitor a plant and support more reliable care.

System

The prototype measured soil moisture, temperature, humidity, and light. Sensor data moved through the microcontroller to a desktop interface, while an Arduino-controlled pump supported watering from the reservoir.

My contribution

I built the Python/Tkinter interface that displayed refreshable sensor readings and plant-care information. I also worked on MQTT and Wi-Fi data exchange between the hardware and interface. The prototype established the core path, though fully reliable two-way remote control remained future work.

Teamwork

Because the physical enclosure, electronics, sensor behavior, watering logic, and interface affected one another, the project required regular coordination across disciplines. Presenting one system forced the team to define interfaces, share constraints, and test dependencies rather than treating each part as a separate assignment.

Reflection

TerraFlow taught me how quickly a concept becomes more complex when electronics, software, water, and user expectations meet. A next version would reduce hardware bulk, improve moisture calibration, and make connection status and manual override clearer in the interface.

Project record

The original team poster below shows the physical reservoir, sensor module, and Python interface. It documents the student prototype rather than a production-ready plant-care product.

View the original poster at full size ↗
Original 2023 TerraFlow team poster with prototype photographs and actual interface screenshots
Original team poster · Cesar Osornio, Quinlan Walinder, Prabhat Vadlamani, Xiaoxi Luo · ENGD120, 2023.