Tuesday, March 22, 2016

33: Computer Farming

If you've followed my blogs you'll know that I involved myself in the Raspberry Pi and Arduino initially help grandchildren who insist on farming. See my post 2

I've recently come across the dirtless farming work done at MIT. See--

http://openag.media.mit.edu/

and

http://www.ted.com/talks/caleb_harper_this_computer_will_grow_your_food_in_the_future?utm_source=tedcomshare&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=tedspread

The MIT system is open source so I visited their github site and downloaded the source code. Interesting. There's a bit of overlap with my much more modest setup. I haven't finished snooping, but it appears that I have used the same sensors as they have -- temperature, humidity, soil temperature, soil moisture, irrigation switching. For testing, I have also programmed a CO2 gas sensor and photo sensor. They also have code for a pH sensor. I've been thinking about that one. There's a big range of prices.

Their system utilizes Arduino Megas and a Raspberry Pi. My system uses Particle.io Photons and a Raspberry Pi. Note: the Photon is as powerful as a Mega. Because of the Photon's "cloud" my Pi is 100 miles away.

Anyway. Their setup is worth studying.

No comments:

Post a Comment