smart agriculture system

Ahmed Ishiba — Fri, 04 Sep 2026 16:55:31 +0000

This is documentation of my latest and most exciting project so far
a smart agriculture system on raspberry pi running a linux image that was customized using the yocto project

this project was part of my final project for my embedded systems diploma, I was tasked to create a system with the following features

system runs on raspberry pi using a custom linux image
automatic watering when soil moisture falls below certain threshold,real-time monitoring of temprature humidity and soil moisture, rain sensor to immediately stop watering when rain starts
a Qt based application for visualization and manual control of the system
application for design patterns to ensure maintainability

Firstly

I decided that the correct order of things was to first be comfortable with the sensors first then start building the image, I was glad I did that because I realized I needed an external ADC since the raspberry pi does not have built in ADC, I then wrote the code using the pigpio python library since I was already proficient in it after my robotics experience

Secondly

I started laying out the dependencies and what features I need and what to leave and came to the following list

SSH (openssh)
splash screen (psplash)
uart
i2c
ADC (ads112)
wifi (wpa-supplicant)
date and time(tzdata)
pigpio
screen support
Qt

I then searched for each recipe on openembedded layer index to see which layer provides which recipe
next step was to determine what append files I need like the splash screen, the wifi, the date and time and the screen support

I included all the necessary layers and recipes and went on to the next step

Thirdly

This was by far the most tiring, frustrating and most confusing step, I am not exaggerating when I say that I spent weeks just researching errors and asking AI bots, not to mention missing dependencies, wrong do_compile functions, wrong source files paths, MAKE files that are over 50 lines and debugging that made me pull my hair, however I didn't feel more satisfied and happy like when I saw the splash screen rendered correctly, the ADC working, the I2C detecting the ADC and not to mention getting readings from the sensors

This part is still somewhat blurry and there are a lot of stuff I just pasted from stack overflow and other sites (AI was not helping in the slightest I think it actually made it more confusing) I want to come back to this post and provide screenshots and demos of the system working but that takes a lot of time and I still have trauma from the Quality Assurance errors and need a break

If you have any tips to help make the process of building systems easier please please tell me

Banking system C++

Ahmed Ishiba — Fri, 04 Sep 2026 15:35:10 +0000

One of my first projects using C++ and Qt was a banking system which I think is the basic project every student has done at least once
It actually gave me a good understanding of C++ and Qt
The project was to be submitted as a final project to my embedded linux diploma and they had some requirements which was

The project must be divided into a server and client application ,I wrote the client application as a QML GUI with some logic as to interpret the button presses and text as signals which then send them to the server application
the communication between the 2 application must be done using sockets (which I had no experience with and was the most frustrating thing to get working)
there should be a user and admin option for the project

First

I decided to start with the easiest thing which was the GUI it was pretty simple, only had to learn some stuff in QML so I opened the documentation and tried some basic stuff since my application is not that advanced

Second

I wrote the signals and slots and incorporated them in my GUI so the button presses actually had an impact

Third

I started doing the server application as a CLI then I added the communication part later, I used a json format for my database since I saw that Qt already had a nice library to interface with json files, next was the classes I made the database as a class and added methods like load, save and other database related functions then for the user class I wrote the methods that was required and is accessible for the user as for the admin I just inherited from the user class and overloaded some functions in order to give the admin more permissions and privileges and added functions that are only accessible to admins

Fourth

fourth came the problem that I kept procrastinating and dreading, the communication.Big shout out to claude AI because he kinda co published it, I learnt some basic stuff about TCP and how to implement it in Qt using their built in library then claude took the steering wheel and wrote stuff I somewhat understand and am too lazy to actually learn

here are some images i created using PlantUML that showcase the inheritance and usage of this banking system

github repo for source code:https://github.com/Ahmed-Ishiba/Cpp-Qt-banking-system.git

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