Fern, automated data collection and analysis for greenhouse researchers
Team Members Heading link
- Peter Chen
- Robert Jaydos
- Cheldine Ntsoumou
- Daniella Rodriguez
- Jessica Vargas
Advisor: Ning Jin, PhD
Project Description Heading link
The aim of our project is to develop an automated data acquisition system for greenhouse researchers. These researchers often monitor hundreds of plants at the same time, so collecting data can be tedious. Our product, Fern, alleviates the burden of manual data collection through automation. Fern is an open-sourced platform that is economical and easily adaptable to user preferences. Our platform supports a variety of sensors capable of collecting both environmental and plant data. The collected data is then displayed on a graphical user interface, and through this interface, researchers can interact with the data in two main fashions. First, the user can perform statistical analysis on the collected data using built-in methods, and second, the user can choose how to display the data in visualizations such as graphs and charts. Lastly, for cross-platform capabilities, the collected data can be stored in a CSV file and then exported to spreadsheet softwares such as Microsoft Excel.