Hackaday Prize 2022: Ultratower is a mighty gardening vertical

The more of us there are on this planet, the more food we need. This naturally extends to water, another valuable resource that typically plays a role in agriculture and food production. And honestly, we'd probably all eat a bit better if it were really easy to grow healthy things like spinach. Well, that excuse no longer works, thanks to [J Gleyzes] 'Ultratower. This is a simple to use hydroponic tower that uses recycled mist to water plants, saving water in the process.

The "ultra" part is a function of how the mist is created. In this case, this is done with three piezoelectric discs mounted under a reservoir in the top of the PVC tube. Stick up to twelve plants in the small boxes, and their roots will grow inside, where they will receive a fine rain of water at your command. The water that trickles from the roots collects in a small reservoir at the bottom, where a pump starts the process again.

In the beginning, [J Gleyzes] had problems with the piezo discs; using 1.7 MHz drives created too much heat, heating the water up to nearly 40°C (104°F). As cooking spinach prematurely would be bad, they experimented with other values, eventually landing on 108KHz. Be sure to watch the video after the break.