Recently, Nanyang Polytechnic's (NYP) announced the four winning teams for the M5STACK-NYP Exploration Project. 

NYP Diploma in Electronic & Computer Engineering has developed an exciting new course that challenges students to design innovative smart technology solutions for retail, urban farming, smart factories, and healthy lifestyles using M5Stack's products and platform. The 30-hour course is divided into four parts, with a focus on learning about M5Stack and the UIFlow IDE, programming with IoT controllers and sensors, completing assignments and quizzes, and creating group projects.  

As a partner and supplier of software and hardware for this course, M5Stack is thrilled to see the creativity and enthusiasm of the students and believe the benefits of this course go beyond improving learning and increasing students' employability since it also creates opportunities for future technological advancement that will make the world better.

In the following paragraphs, we will introduce the top teams' projects and show how they have used M5Stack's technology to create amazing solutions for some of today's most pressing challenges.

Smart Energy Efficient Urban Farming  

Electricity tariffs in Singapore are rising, and research has shown that factors such as artificial light, plant competition, overwatering and humidity can affect plant growth in urban agriculture. In light of this, this project aims to develop sustainable and energy-efficient practices to address these challenges and promote environmental sustainability in urban agriculture.

To achieve this, the project includes several innovative technologies, such as a height checker that uses a TOF sensor to measure plant growth and plots the data on a dashboard. An automated sunroof adjusts the amount of natural light entering the greenhouse using a light sensor, while a moisture sensor monitors soil moisture levels to prevent overwatering. The project also features an air conditioner that uses the ENV II Unit to regulate temperature and humidity levels in the greenhouse.

Project Link: https://www.hackster.io/anti-semites/smart-energy-efficient-urban-farming-ef4777

PEST TERROR

Urban farming has become an increasingly popular way for people in urban areas to grow their food, but it also comes with its own set of challenges, including pest management. Traditional chemical insecticides can be harmful to the environment and can contaminate the food grown, making it necessary to develop alternative pest control methods.

This project aims to address the challenge of pest management in urban farming without relying on human intervention or chemical insecticides. The project utilizes  M5stack’s iot controllers and sensor, to simulate an automated pest control system that could be developed to effectively manage pests in urban farms.

It includes an antenna system and a robot to detect and eliminate pests. The antenna system has an automated water sprinkler that sprays garlic-infused water, which is a natural repellent, and produces ultrasound waves that some pests find irritating. If a pest that is resistant to garlic water and ultrasound is detected, the antenna system signals the robot to eliminate the pest.

The robot acts as a natural deterrent to birds and has flashing lights and vacuum guns to eliminate pests. The project offers an alternative solution to traditional chemical insecticides and promotes natural pest control in urban farming.

Project Link: https://www.hackster.io/500784/project-pest-terror-3ba3f2

Bee Integration into Commercial Urban Farms

Many commercial urban farms are closed systems, meaning there are no natural pollinators such as bees, butterflies, and birds to provide pollination to crops that need it. This can result in inefficient manual pollination methods being used, which may decrease crop yield and quality.

The project aims to solve the issue of pollination in commercial urban farms by using sensors to integrate bees into  farms and optimize pollination rates while tracking the health of bees automatically.

To achieve successful integration of bees, the project focuses on two key areas: high crop yield and automation. The solution for achieving high crop yield involves a checkpoint system that counts the number of bees and manipulates their movement to achieve optimal pollination rates. The solution for automation involves using sensors to monitor the temperature and humidity of the beehive and indicating the health of the bees using an LED.

Project Link: https://www.hackster.io/jschong117/bee-integration-into-commercial-urban-farms-9dabb3

Urban Farming Overseer

Challenges in urban farming include fish deaths due to toxic ammonia levels from fish waste, difficulty growing certain foreign plants due to inadequate weather conditions, mass crop deaths from inconsistent watering in soil-based vertical farms, increased expenses and prices due to manual monitoring of plant and fish health, and reduced crop yield from pest and disease outbreaks.

This system helps urban farmers remotely monitor internal conditions in their farms without needing to manually do it themselves. By measuring ammonia levels in fish farms, moisture levels in soil, and overall temperature and humidity, Urban Farming Overseer allows farmers to quickly identify suboptimal conditions and notify personnel to arrange for more efficient maintenance.

Project link: https://www.hackster.io/gawain2/urban-farming-overseer-eb0fd4

on March 6, The International Innovation Policy and Practice Conference was held in Shenzhen, China. Aiming to promote the establishment of the World Innovative Cities Cooperation Organization (WICCO) and build a platform for exchange, cooperation and resource-sharing among the world's leading innovative cities, this meeting brought together in Shenzhen mayors of some of the world's innovative cities, heads of famous technology enterprises, research institutes and venture capital institutions, and representatives of international organizations in China to discuss innovation, seek cooperation, and build an international innovation ecosystem.

Takasu Masakazu, a world-renowned maker, visiting lecturer of Waseda University, and partner of Switch Science Inc., elaborated on the development history and advantages of Shenzhen's hardware supply chain industry and introduced the characteristics of Shenzhen as the world's "Silicon Valley of Hardware". Notably, in his speech, Masakazu Takasu devoted nearly a quarter of his speech to introducing a Shenzhen-based open-source hardware company, M5Stack, to the audience.

What's so special about M5Stack, a company with such a strange-sounding name at first glance?  And why is it being showcased to represent Shenzhen-based open-source hardware companies?

Founded in 2015, M5Stack is a famous Shenzhen-based startup. In Japan, M5Stack is a popular presence among makers. There are 44 operation guide book books about M5Stack on the Japanese Amazon website, and many Japanese companies, universities and colleges use M5Stack for prototyping, validation, teaching and working.

Additionally, many makers all over the world have come to love M5Stack because of its plug-and-play, modular, adaptable, and stacking capabilities. M5Stack also partners with major companies in the industry like Microsoft, Sony, Ericsson, Amazon Web Services, Foxconn, and Siemens.

Link the World by Open Source - the Story of M5Stack

01 The idea

The story of M5Stack began with an idea from the founder Jimmy Lai. He was leaving Southern Grid and found a pile of discarded development boards in a drawer in his studio, which had become useless after having proven the product's functionality. In Jimmy’s opinion, these traditional development boards, with their exposed circuit boards and wires, were not only "crude" in appearance, but also complicated to operate and not conducive to further expansion.

And for individual developers, it can be costly in terms of time, effort and money to turn a rudimentary prototype based on a development board into a product that can be used in everyday scenarios.

"How about developing a modular development kit that could assist developers in swiftly developing and validating their concepts and working directly from idea to product," Jimmy Lai founded his company based on this notion.

02 Open source product system 

The "Stack" product, which has a modular design and a standard size of 5 cm by 5 cm, is plug-and-play, stackable, and extendable. Users can stack the modules with various functionalities to speed up product verification and development, and as a result, "M5Stack" was created. Today, M5Stack has 300+ SKUs, covering the full range of products from embedded controllers and communication modules to sensors, with high performance, reliability, scalability, and quick access to cloud platforms like Azure, and AWS.

03 A convenient graphical platform-UIFlow

Hardware development can be simplified by modular design, but software programming is still a challenge for most individuals. UIFLOW, a low-code graphical programming IDE, was introduced by M5Stack with this problem in mind to offer the greatest experience for prototyping IoT applications from entry-level hobbyists to experienced developers. With UIFLOW, a user can construct a solution out of a single block or use many blocks to achieve more complex scenarios. 

04 Community operations and rapid development

On social media platforms and communities, M5Stack always shares new ideas and real-time product development processes with the fans and makes quick adjustments based on the inspiration and feedback from the users. As a result, it has promoted a positive community culture, with many users regularly offering their thoughts, open-source projects, and practical advice. This has helped to shape what M5Stack is today.