Project / 24green Climate Computer

I developed innovative ways to automate the greenhouse industry.

I worked on a new climate computer that was able to control climate and irrigation in greenhouses. The computer also connected to an online platform, where analysis of data was made possible. Customers could control their climate computer remotely, as well as gain insight into their greenhouse climate and irrigation parameters using only a browser. The computer was a headless on-site piece of equipment that could be controlled from anywhere in the world, as long as it had an internet connection.

During my time at 24green I optimized and improved several designs in the computer software. Most notably are the following:

I was responsible for the design of the flexible control design, that allowed controls to be dynamically linked by the customers. This made our computer suitable for any kind of situation, with any kind of complexity.

I was also responsible for optimizing the hardware coupling of the computer. Before my design, the computer was not able to control more than about 50 separate actuations (like motors, pumps or valves). After my optimized design, the computer could handle well over the physical capacity of actuators inside the control unit, so at least more than 500. My design also guaranteed that measurements would come in first, then all processing of the controls would be done in parallel, finally followed by the actuations. This way, the reaction time of our computer was always exactly one hardware communication cycle.

I worked with an industrial embedded PC running Windows XP embedded. This PC has to make sure that all the greenhouse processes are regulated correctly without user interaction.

I worked with C#, ASP.NET, Windows XP Embedded, JQuery, Knockout, AngularJS, Hibernate, Entity Framework, Windows Azure and Azure Servicebus.