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Prefab Greenhouse + Ardunio Controls = Automated Agriculture (Video)
Sam Bagot and Will Bratton operate Horto Domi (hortodomi.com), an agricultural project they describe as "beyond organic." They're working with small prefab greenhouses, adding sensors and Arduino-actuated controls, and even including an earthworm breeding area in most domes, because earthworms are good for the soil and can increase plant production. If you're the kind of person whose plants always seem to shrivel up and die, this may be a great way to garden. With watering and other functions automated, it looks like all you have to do is set your controls, plant what you want to grow, and wait for the "time to harvest" alarm to go off. Okay, it might not be that simple, but Sam and Will say their gardening method saves a lot of energy and time. It also looks like fun, besides being an easy way to grow your own 100% organic fruits and vegetables.
...one might even call it orthogonal to organic! Or not related to organic at all!
I mean, the worms, sure, but arduinos? Automation does not make things magical, it just makes them work. (And if anything, doesn't that make the growing more artificial?)
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>> earthworm breeding area... ...complete with rotating bed, mirrored ceiling, and Barry White soundtrack.
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Good for small home projects but does not scale. Not sure if that is the objective with this, but I think farmers will stick with traditional farming
(no, not for the Micronaut)
Kind of begs the question --- how would homesteading look w/ 21st century technology? How much land does one need for a self-sufficient existence for a family of 4?
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I would love to watch the video, but it would require Flash. Being Slashdot, is it not possible at this point to load the videos in html5?
Hydroponic Cannabis growers have been doing this for years. Automatic lighting systems, hydration, nutrients, ventilation, etc.
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Never understood why you would need a separate breeding area. Won't they breed to the exact right amount once you introduce them into where you actually want to use them?
Troll is not a replacement for I disagree.
come to think of it those 2 guys look like a couple of pot heads. Think I'm starting to understand their objective with this project.
Hmm, when every suburb has tens of thousands of these little domes, the cops can't check 'em all!
I have to say though that from watching the videos they strike me a lot more as eco-nerds than potheads. Way too industrious.
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That seems similar to mourning the downfall of mainframes and high-power UNIX workstations and the rise of the PCs, and that people start using high level languages before taking the time to learn assembler and memory timings or whatever first.
In an ideal world, all competent programmers would be well versed in all the important aspects of programming and hardware. It's similar with MCU and EE projects. In real world, to get shit done, there are other important factors other than technical competency and lowering the playing field enables hacking electronics for people with little or no experience, only spotty technical understanding of what's going on at all levels, but with familiarity with other fields (e.g. gardening), enthusiasm, determination to pull the project through, documentation skills or whatever. The new projects aren't as perfect technically, but there's heck more of them and they are making ways to yet uncharted areas (and budgets).
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So why don't you put something together, with your non-Arduino knowledge, that automates the old man screaming at the kids to "Get off my lawn".
All of that would be lost on a turn-key operation such as this, and those poor fools wouldn't even realize what they're missing.
I have a feeling these guys know exactly what they are missing, that was probably the entire point of doing this. So I wouldn't say they are missing it, they are avoiding it.
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I'm sure this kind of scheme would give the owner some warm fuzzy feelings, knowing that they did it themselves, and that in principle they're 'saving the planet' by growing without pesticides...
But really, you'd have to voluntarily ignore the total financial AND environmental costs.
How many veggies do you need to grow and eat before you break-even on the cost of the setup?
How many to grow & eat before the reduced pesticide use makes up for the energy-costs and pollution associated with fabrication, distribution and eventual safe disposal of the hardware?
I know that's not 'the' point, but it does need to be considered int eh context of the 'cool' factor
Domo arigato, garden roboto.
Slashdot, here's some feedback for making better videos.
In comparison to other slashdot videos, this one's OK, and it could be a better. Without commenting on the content or participants or video production (which other people can do), here's some notes about presentation:
Repeat until memorized:
Having a video of talking heads/talking people is the wrong way to present. Watching people talk is boring! Use the right technology in the right way for maximum interest.
A short clip of people talking will establish the context and make a personal connection with the viewer. Then cutting to illustrative videos while they talk makes a stronger, clearer presentation of the information.
(Also, briefly cut back to the people talking to reestablish context between subjects. Talking heads aren't forbidden, but using talking heads to present verbal information is bad form.)
When the video finally cuts away from the talking heads, it doesn't track the speech! Talk about the dome size, type, materials, area, earthworms is dubbed over a video of the controller box. The audio doesn't match the video, and it makes no sense.
Choose video clips which correspond to and illustrate the talk, this serves to present the information in two ways (video and audio) for better impact.
What's the point of the picture-in-picture at the beginning? It's arty and establishes the context (ie - growing things), but context is established after 5 seconds or so. What's the point of PIP for 45 seconds? You're crippling the presentation for no purpose.
The subject and content is pretty good. The people interviewed give a surprisingly good talk, given that this was probably off-the-cuff and they're not professional presenters. No problems there.
The content was a little shallow - it's more of an advertizing brochure with no detail. I would have liked to hear more about the nuts-and-bolts of what they are doing: their controller box, how things connect, what micros/sensors/interfaces they use, how the dome is built, what materials to use, assembly, &c. I know it's in the link, but this is a web site for people interested in tech, and since tech is what will get people interested in their site, you should explore it.
Overall the quality of video posts is improving. Keep up the good work, and keep on making it better.
This guy also has a cool setup with arduino controlled aquaponics..
http://www.kijanigrows.com/
http://faircompanies.com/videos/view/internet-food-arduino-based-urban-aquaponics-in-oakland/
have been doing for decades?
First this is too complicated BTW I own a hydroponic store. The all in one controllers have been on the market for years and years but no one wants them as you put all your eggs in one basket. The controller fails and your garden is done if you're not around to keep an eye on it. Here's one that's on the market now http://www.grozonecontrol.com/SCC1_en.html There are other systems on the market that you can view through your phone and see the stats for your garden.
Everything they talk about can be done using existing products on the market. The watering part is pretty simple with the proper soil less media you can just use a recycling timer to water your plants several times per day.
From the video I get the idea that they are more concerned about the "microprocessor" part than actually coming up with a cheap way to grow at home year round. One thing they don't talk about is the cost of electricity for the HID lights and the heating in winter.
What they should also be looking at is creating a neighbourhood co-op where say 5-10 house holds grows a different crop and they all share/trade with each other. This way you could have each house hold specialize in a crop and not having to worry about growing several crops at once.
by TheSpoom (715771) Uncaring Linux user here. I have nothing to add to this but please continue. *munches popcorn*
no other controller could possible be used to automate a greenhouse?
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It's a lot safer and saner to have a dedicated 120V timer switch for your lights than to wire in a, e.g. 5V DC - 120V AC relay so you can control your lights with a microcontroller.
Also, ph and nutrient testing are generally done by hand unless you have a very large operation. A good pH probe costs $100, and then you have to take the time and effort to hook it up to a microcontroller. Then do that for each hydro system, because in a continuous op you'll have at least two of these -- probably three, for the seedling/clone, vegetative growth, and flowering stages. That won't necessarily get you eC readings too, although it's possible. CO2 is another pain.
Don't get me wrong, one of my next life goals is to set something like that up. Most growers, however, just throw a $10 timer on the lights and forget about it. Geek factor aside, the ROI just doesn't justify a small unified automation system. If you have a warehouse-sized operation, you can probably afford to drop $4-10k on automation electronics. These will probably not be arduino-based.
P.S. Anyone who wants to contribute some electrical expertise, please send me an email.
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The comment below works almost as well as a reply to this:
It's not really any different to using a tractor to dig a hole instead of a spade. The same "ingredients" are going in, but the tedium and repetitive tasks are reduced or eliminated entirely.
Using an Arduino board just removes the tedium of soldering up the components to make the microcontroller tick, and lets you focus on the interesting bits, which are the hardware it's connected to and the software.
Yeah. Real EEs use discrete components to prototype, which they fabricate themselves. After all their time has little value -- certainly less than the princely $20 a fully assembled and tested Arduino board set them back.
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I would just use a electricity timer for the supplemental light and a water timer for irrigation . agriculture also involves business, I doubt this is viable.
I've spent the last couple of years working on a system similar to this. I've designed a modular aquaponics/microponics system with a portable greenhouse, custom biofilter, gravity-fed drip irrigation and solar and geothermal heating, all based on UNIX principles: modularity, simplicity, standard interfaces, robustness, ease of repair and maintenance, extensibility, and of course automation. I haven't had time to document much so far, but I made a little introduction video you can see here.
I use Arduinos to monitor temperature and soil moisture, and to control pumps, heaters, and irrigation valves. There's a modular chicken coop, with automated doors also controlled by an Arduino. The Arduino is a great platform for this type of thing. It's extremely reliable, easy to program, and extensible. For example, I decided I didn't like any of the existing relay shields available, so I created my own shield that controls eight standard irrigation solenoids. That was very simple thanks to the openness of the Arduino platform.
The garden isn't quite year-round yet, but that's the eventual goal. If you setup everything right, it really isn't much work to maintain, just like Open Source software. My concentration has been on automating as much as possible, while sticking with organic and permaculture growing principles. I started out by eliminating daily chores, then moved on to automating weekly tasks. At the moment, my system can go for a month or so without intervention, and most work is bi-annual.
Everything is interconnected in one way or another. Grass clippings go into the chicken coop. Chicken litter goes into the compost bin, along with paper trash and kitchen waste. Compost goes on the garden. The chicken coop and compost bin provide shelter for beneficial insects. Fresh water goes into the fish tanks. Fish-fertilized water goes onto the garden, and into the duckweed ponds. Duckweed supplements the fish and chicken feed, and provides clean, fresh water.
I think this is just one of many great directions for the future of the Open Source movement. It's easy to predict that projects like Arduino, RepRap and Open Source Ecology are going to make a huge impact on the world in the coming years, in much the same way that Free and Open Source software have shaped technology over the last decade.
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