Imagine that you are an Agricultural Engineer who needs to help design a smart farming system to help make watering plants more efficient.

Work in a group to design, build & code your own smart watering system.

Digital graphic illustration of three construction workers looking over a blueprint
What does an Agricultural Engineer do? Check out their Career Profile!

As you go through the steps below, you may wish to use our Design Journal Template to keep track of your work.

Journal Template
An icon of a magnifying glass, a paper with notes, and a brain.

Step 1

Research smart farms. You may way to look-up ‘vertical farming’, ‘automated farming’, and ‘hydroponic farming’ for different examples.

Icons of a light bulb, a thought bubble, and a pencil.

Step 2

Plan what features your system will have and decide what building blocks, sensors, smart components, and craft materials you will need for building.

icons of 3 building blocks (cube, corner connector, and short frame)

Step 3

Build your prototype, then connect it to Microsoft MakeCode to add code.

Icons of code blocks.

Step 4

Test and debug until the device works.

SUCCESS CRITERIA

I can build a smart farming system that uses at least:

  • one sensor to measure environmental data (e.g. moisture levels)
  • one control structure (e.g. conditional, loop) to automate farming steps based on environmental conditions and/or user input

Don’t feel limited by this. You can get creative and add more features if you would like!

Let’s Build!