A smart plant-watering system won the Battle of the Brains STEM contest Saturday. Houston High teams took all three places from 22 projects.

A sprinkler that waters plants only when the soil runs dry won this year’s Battle of the Brains, Germantown’s high school science contest. Teams from Houston High School took all three places.

Students entered 22 projects Saturday, Oct. 24, at Houston High. They came from Houston High and St. Mary’s Episcopal School in Memphis. Each team presented its research to university professors in the field.

The Germantown Education Commission runs the contest every year. The city published the results Tuesday in a city news release on Battle of the Brains.

The winners

Place Project Team Prize each
First The Auto Sprinky 5000: Smart Automatic Plant Watering System Gurukrishnan Kesavan, Aiden Jauregui, Aui Grishman and Matthew Moser $300
Second Mental Health Monitor Allen Cheng, Aarav Yaligar, Pranav Bhat and Lukas Weinmann $200
Third Seizure detection research Aiden Ervin, Betsy Rivas and Oluwatosin Akinjinmi $100

All three teams are from Houston High, the city said. The first-place names will also go on the Einstein Trophy, which has marked the winners since the contest began in 2009.

What the students built

First place. The Auto Sprinky 5000 uses a soil moisture sensor and an Arduino board. When the soil gets too dry, it switches on a pump and a sprinkler. It also tracks temperature and light, and a dashboard written in Python shows the readings and each watering. The team plans to compare water use and plant growth against watering by hand.

Second place. The Mental Health Monitor is a proposed device that watches sound, physical, biochemical and stress signals for signs of a mental health crisis. It would alert first responders or doctors and pass on the patient’s condition.

Third place. This team asked how accurate seizure-detection software really is. Using scalp EEG recordings, it tested whether machine-learning models look better than they are when data from the same patient is used both to train and to test them. The team then checked how the models do on patients they have never seen.

“Battle of the Brains encourages students to think big, solve problems and find ways to make a difference in their communities and beyond,” Education Commission Chairman Beth Robbins said.

Dino Palazzolo, Sridhar Shankar and Divyabharathi Chepyala judged the projects.

What it means for you

  • The contest is open to students at Germantown High and Houston High, and to high school students who live in Germantown but go to school outside the city or are homeschooled.
  • It is held each fall. Families can follow the Education Commission’s plans through the city’s education page.
  • The commission also gives Teacher and Youth Excellence Awards; its October winners were named this week.

More on the city’s schools: Houston High School and public schools in Germantown.