Type:Physical Computing, internet of Things, UN sustainable Development, System design
About
Oasis-42 is an apartment-based distributed community garden system that augments the social aspects associated with urban horticultural projects. It was developed to be a driver of pro-social qualities in the context of high-density apartment living. At its core, the Oasis-42 system is an Internet of Everything (IoT) system. Sensors connected to an Arduino ESP-32 measure plant-related data, specifically humidity, air temperature, visible light, and soil moisture level. The ESP-32 then publishes this to an online MQTT broker, using the MQTT publish / subscribe protocol, under a specific topic, say "mushi" (Japanese for insect). p5.js sketches that are subscribed to the "mushi" topic are embedded into a webpage. Everytime the ESP-32 publishes data to the MQTT broker under the "mushi" topic, the MQTT broker then pushes that data to the p5.js sketches. The p5.js sketches take in this data from the MQTT broker and display it within a creative, artistic, and visual context. This makes it easier for anyone looking at these sketches to comprehend the data, which aligns with the claim that our brain processes images 60,000 times faster than text. Some of the p5.js sketches may depict visual representations of data that might not be plant-related. For example, in a sketch featuring a fractral tree, several of its leaves may blink when a user accesses the webpage, but if enough users access the webpage, all the leaves light up and glow. Besides the p5.js sketches, the website also contains various points of online social interaction, specifically, a comment box, a live chat box, a Twitter Timeline, and a YouTube How-To gardening playlist. These components offer users a platform to connect with other residents. It is also hoped that these components confer upon the user a sense of connectedness with the greater apartment community.
