Smart Greenhouse for Plant Cultivation
The customer came with a vision of an automated plant cultivation system, where each plant would have optimal growth conditions thanks to precise monitoring and control of environmental factors. The primary requirement was that users should be able to configure individual actions and growth phases themselves. The customer already had a prototype of a mobile greenhouse and needed a software solution to fully automate the process.
For this project, we developed a FileMaker application that serves as the main interface for greenhouse control and configuration of plant growth cycles. Using our Bridge for Phidgets plugin, we enabled communication between FileMaker and the sensors in the greenhouse. Within the application, users can configure the individual growth phases—each phase has defined conditions such as temperature, air and water humidity, fertilizer amount, or length of daylight exposure. All these conditions are monitored via connected sensors. Based on the evaluation of these conditions, the system executes predefined actions, such as starting irrigation or opening the water drain.
In addition to the fully automated mode, we also added the option for manual control, allowing users to trigger operations manually. The application includes a logging system that records all events, aiding in debugging or tracking the growth history. One particularly interesting aspect was the development of a custom scripting language that allows users to define logic for actions—for example, “if the water level is high, open the drain and monitor whether it decreases.”
