This is yet another endeavor that student engineers have been pursuing in our classrooms for the better part of a decade. This started early on by introducing Arduino and Raspberry Pi to enhance middle school science labs. We then began incorporating simple monitoring and control systems into our DIY growing systems. Some students even went on to develop passion projects that won them competitions and got them published in magazines.

What students are working on now is at the bleeding edge of the future of food production. Within our large scale food production units, students are working to optimize the production of our crops while minimizing the amount of time we need to spend doing it. The NASA Space Grant Consortium has supported us in bringing in industry grade equipment to monitor our systems. This has expanded the programming horizons for students to include computer vision and AI.