101–110 of 236 posts
The only missing thing to this is a gun. To automatically shoot at random animals interested in your garden.
Yes, planting, watering and weeding are the easy parts. Keeping deer, birds, rabbits and raccoons from eating everything is a much bigger issue, in my experience.
I've built robots. I've built greenhouses. I like software and the occasional bit of farming. Thirs looks cute and fun, and I hope they iterate, but it's not really solving the right problems, and introduces its own. 1 - there are no straight lines on a farm. Maybe in a hydro setup built on concrete slab, in which case, why robot? 2 - needs a way to cover more ground. If it's not able to travel linearly indefinitely…
Re the weeding robot -- you may be thinking of https://tertill.com iRobot founders' new thing. Small, and undercapitalized, but promising.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
This is a for small hipster raised bed farming in back yard. Maybe it doesn't have to scale to a size of a commercial farm
As a fellow backyard raised bed hipster, part of the point for me is going out and tending it. I struggle to see the value in this unless it’s about scaling.
Observe: "Using the manual controls, you can move FarmBot and operate its tools and peripherals in real-time. Scare birds away while at work, take photos of your veggies, turn the lights on for a night time harvest, or simply impress your friends and neighbors with a quick demo."
I think humans moving further from soil is unhealthy in the long run, but this looks fun, like a reverse farming simulator.
Growing your own veggies requires an awful lot of time, so barely anybody does it. If this robot allows people with little time to grow vegetables in their backyard, you can argue that they will move closer to soil rather than further...
I suspect this varies by location and demographics. Being an older guy living in rural areas, almost everyone I know grows at least some veggies and fruit. Not everyone makes it a major part of their lives, but I'd be hard-pressed to find almost anyone I know who doesn't have at least a couple tomato plants, or some berry bushes.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Re the weeding robot -- you may be thinking of https://tertill.com iRobot founders' new thing. Small, and undercapitalized, but promising.
Tertill is cool and all, but for a new garden, you still have to weed until the payplants are big enough to trigger "collisions". There's no magic in sensing: It just kills new growth.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
This is a for small hipster raised bed farming in back yard. Maybe it doesn't have to scale to a size of a commercial farm
As a fellow backyard raised bed hipster, part of the point for me is going out and tending it. I struggle to see the value in this unless it’s about scaling.
Robot aside, the UI to plan your planting is pretty great though.
I've built robots. I've built greenhouses. I like software and the occasional bit of farming. Thirs looks cute and fun, and I hope they iterate, but it's not really solving the right problems, and introduces its own. 1 - there are no straight lines on a farm. Maybe in a hydro setup built on concrete slab, in which case, why robot? 2 - needs a way to cover more ground. If it's not able to travel linearly indefinitely…
I had a friend reach out to me, because his dad is a farmer and needed a programmer to work on his tractors, or something like that. I gave him some suggestions such as posting upwork, and fverr. I would hate to be in his position. I don't see anyone with the required electrical engineering background, willing to work on a one off project for a farmer. As far as I know, he did not find anyone.
I've built robots. I've built greenhouses. I like software and the occasional bit of farming. Thirs looks cute and fun, and I hope they iterate, but it's not really solving the right problems, and introduces its own. 1 - there are no straight lines on a farm. Maybe in a hydro setup built on concrete slab, in which case, why robot? 2 - needs a way to cover more ground. If it's not able to travel linearly indefinitely…
https://www.toro.com/en/professional-contractor/compact-util...
I had a friend reach out to me, because his dad is a farmer and needed a programmer to work on his tractors, or something like that. I gave him some suggestions such as posting upwork, and fverr. I would hate to be in his position. I don't see anyone with the required electrical engineering background, willing to work on a one off project for a farmer. As far as I know, he did not find anyone.
out of curiosity, what did he need done and how much was he offering? I do think the kind of SWE you need for that kind of job is unlikely to hang out on fiverrr or upwork.
"My dad, who I copied on this email had a quick question regarding hiring a programmer to write a small program for a farm equipment control system" is what I responded to.