A group of student engineers is working together to develop an automated greenhouse climate-control system.
In the system, a microcontroller reads ambient temperature and soil moisture levels from physical sensors. If the soil moisture falls below a certain threshold, the system opens a solenoid water valve. If the temperature exceeds a set limit, an exhaust fan is activated. Real-time sensor readings and system status updates are continuously printed on an LCD dashboard screen. Additionally, a buzzer alarm triggers if a level sensor detects that the water reservoir has dropped below 10% capacity.
Discuss how the students can use decomposition and abstraction to design and develop this automated system.
Your write-up should include:
- A definition of both decomposition and abstraction.
- The benefits that each computational thinking method brings to a team of developers.
- Specific examples of where each method would be applied in the design, hardware setup, or software code of this greenhouse climate-control system.