Side Table Home Garden

Back to all projects

Side table home garden prototype with lid raised showing grow lights, planter pot, and wood-wrapped bucket form factor
March 2025

Side Table Home Garden

A fully automatic indoor garden disguised as a side table, designed for my Innovation Studio 1 graduate course. The prompt was to make fresh produce more accessible to people in food deserts — rather than adding another appliance to the home, this integrates a garden into existing furniture. The prototype features a soil moisture sensor, grow lights, a peristaltic pump for automated watering, and a camera for machine vision plant monitoring, all connected to the web for remote access. The lid is height-adjustable for easy access to the garden. This was a rapid prototyping class focused on the thinking process over a polished final product.

Prototyping IoT 3D Printing Original Design
Interior electronics bay beneath the planter showing peristaltic pump, soil moisture sensor wiring, and microcontroller

3D model of custom components used to mount electronics and equipment

Concept sketches

Detailed sketch of the chosen bucket-based side table concept with notes on camera, pump, lighting, and app connectivity Sketch page showing the selected concept with improvements — wood exterior, grow lights, watering system, height-adjustable lid, and mushroom growing in the shade below First page of concept sketches showing nine initial ideas including bucket planter, stackable boxes, milk crates, adjustable rod system, wall mount grid, and more Second page of concept sketches showing ideas 10 through 18 including articulating joints, robot planter, toilet aquaponics, coffee table planter, and recycled bottle hydroponics Third page of concept sketches showing ideas 19 through 25 including modular clay pot rack, solar powered lights, window hanging garden, mushroom planter kits, and door hanger kit Sketch of a coffee table planter concept with transparent sides showing plants and cubby storage below