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
| Application.pdf |
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