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  • Author Author: m.ratcliffe
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Automated Green House Blog:1 - Motivation

m.ratcliffe

I am glad to see my application made it into the Competition along side so many other great applications, I can see this being a real challenge.

 

about me:

Graduated with a degree in mechanical engineering and a masters in electrical engineering currently finishing my gap year and taking some time to design an automated greenhouse and small allotment type garden to provide a yearlong hassle free supply of food and a test bed for novel nutrient sourcing  aquaponics grow system.

 

Until the age of 21 I would consider myself a computer-phoebe, using my laptop mainly as a coffee matt, Then I saw a tutor flying a Quadcopter and got  hooked!  with a lot of help from the tutor [Bob Mackin of Lancaster university] I overcame the phobia and  five years later I have automated and optimized many of the time consuming jobs on the farm and house, moving my area of expertise from mechanical engineering to control system engineering [Its much more Fun].

 

 

The Motivation

 

Learning how to farm from your father as he did with your Grandfather is no longer going to cut it, the world is changing, the demands are increasing and the methods are staying firmly the same, the number of people on the verge of starvation and suffering malnutrition is climbing and climbing fast.

 

We need modern solutions to modern problems, step in a hacker. A hacker see’s a problem differently than the average person, most see waste they will see opportunity. The Hacker Way is an approach to building that involves continuous improvement and iteration. Hackers believe that something can always be better, and that nothing is ever complete.

So what is a hacker’s solution to world hunger, take something that is free and use it to solve a problem, if you are thinking how that can be a solution. See it as a computer code/ flow chart, what are the inputs, outputs and leakages in the food supply? Plug the leaks, find alternative inputs and find a use for the waste.

 

So what has this got to do with an automated Greenhouse? The greenhouse has been set up as a low budget testing system for up and coming farming technologies.

 

 

The Application

 

The Original application is attached in Pdf Format. I will be summarising it in a following blog video.

 

 

Upcoming Blogs:

 

>Un-boxing and first impressions of the supplied kit

>Video Showing the current Greenhouse condition and systems

>Tutorial to build the mechanical portion of a automatic fish feede

 

The ball is in motion, the Competition Kit in the post and I look forward to seeing what evolves from the competitors interaction,

 

Michael

 

 

Check Out my Blog over on hackaday: https://hackaday.io/project/7008-fly-wars-a-hackers-solution-to-world-hunger

Attachments:
imageApplication.pdf
Parents

  • Michael

    You certainly have some very creative solutions to some of the difficulties.

    The use of an auger to overcome the automated feeder problem that many struggle with, is simple and effective.

     

    I see the Hackaday blog suggests your automated fish feeder is still in development and available on kickstarter.

    Does this integrate into this or replace it.?

     

    Mark

  • in reply to mcb1

    Hi Mark,

    The physical portion of the feeder is already working and so is the temperature based controller. There are a lot of projects going on at once here, all similar enough to make confusion. I will be doing a video walk around the system to clear this up once my kit arrives.

     

    The greenhouse at the moment feeds the fish on the hour, the amount based on a the water temperature in the pond. It works and works quite well, but I dislike having no feedback loop to make best use of the food, so today I am implementing a vision based control loop on a Raspberry Pi.

     

    Over the next week I will be making the following tutorials:

     

    >How to build a auger based feeder

    >How to control the auger based feeder, [Timer,temperature,Vision].

     

    Posting them on Hackaday and condensed version on here, It cant really be a part of the competition being Raspberry Pi based. But I am sure people will find the auger feeder interesting and will hopefully make some improvements I can use myself.

  • in reply to m.ratcliffe

    That makes more sense now.

     

    The RPi can be included in the challenge,

    As long as you are using the Wireless Starting kit, you can always add other hardware.

     

    Mark

Comment Children
  • in reply to mcb1

    I'm glad I could clear that up for you mark.

     

    Do you work for Element14? I will gladly include a full write up on this blog if it is not considered going off topic.

  • in reply to m.ratcliffe

    Do you work for Element14?

    No.  .. but I have been here for a while and entered into several challenges ...

     

    The whole object of the Design Challenges is to encourage ideas, solutions and inspire people to do things.

    Sometimes these might be outside their comfort zone, or just beyond what they think they can achieve.

     

    We've seen many ideas being used in other applications, and some very novel ideas that others hadn't thought of for an item.

     

     

    I'd strongly encourage you to share the ideas here. It might lead to better chances in other challenges, or other opportunities.

    Over the years, some competitors have received aditional items to assist them since their project was worthwhile and they were sharing in an open forum.

     

    I'd suggest since you are in this design Challange that you stick with blogging here, and adding enough information to allow others to replicate it.

    It could make the difference when the voting comes along. You could use it as a filler if your other parts are delayed ...

     

    Feel free to check some of the other design challenges and you'll soon see what I mean.

     

     

    Mark

  • in reply to mcb1

    thanks for the detailed reply Mark. I appreciate it, The suggestions will proves useful.

     

    I have stumbled into element14 from google a few times when looking for solutions to coding problems. The fact that there are previous competition Blogs to read over had not crossed my mind.

     

    Mike