Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Open Source Farming Robot

farm.bot

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

101–110 of 369 posts

Re: Open Source Farming Robot

#101

Post by thatcat »

garbagewoman wrote: post #83
taylorfinley wrote: post #27

I can't help but feel like this is a satirical send up of "tech bros solve farming," except it's not satire. I am a software engineer, I also runs a small family farm. I have 3d printers and laser cutters and lots of aluminum extrusion and raspberry pis... but I keep those things indoors, away from the dirt, sun, and rain. I can't imagine a real farmer using a contraption like this. Tools have to be reliable to last.…

Whats your point, that its not durable enough? Based on what? It doesn’t have a shovel attachment either as far as i can tell

Lol dirt is going to get in all of it and it's very hard to clean extruded aluminum rails, not to mention how small those wheels were. How's it driven - belts / gears? How often are you going to disassemble and maintain this thing? what's the maintenance schedule like? I would bet it is more demanding than planting a 4x8 raised bed.

That said I still love the project. I don't think the point is to grow plants maximally efficiently at this point, it's a early release of something cool and it's open source.

Re: Open Source Farming Robot

#102

Post by mherrmann »

Having watched Clarkson's Farm, I can't help but feel that farming is extremely antiquated. The sensitivity to unexpected weather and the low profit margins despite the high investments of time and money seem terrible. I can't see us as an advanced species doing this in 100 years, except for specialty experiences.

Re: Open Source Farming Robot

#103

Post by daemonologist »

ragebol wrote: post #99

I've always wondered why this robot uses a gantry system. Would be less intrusive and thus easier to work alongside a human if it was a polar system, with a single pole in the middle/corner, like a tower crane. Simpler mechanically as well I suppose

I toyed with a cable-bot (like what is used for top-down shots at sporting events) for gardening. Needs three towers and probably difficult to make sturdy enough for watering but way cheaper at large scales than anything rigid and relatively more portable.

Re: Open Source Farming Robot

#104

Post by torlok »

mherrmann wrote: post #102

Having watched Clarkson's Farm, I can't help but feel that farming is extremely antiquated. The sensitivity to unexpected weather and the low profit margins despite the high investments of time and money seem terrible. I can't see us as an advanced species doing this in 100 years, except for specialty experiences.

Modern farming is anything but antiquated. A lot of science goes into it, and it's the most efficient use of national resources to produce food. The downsides you mentioned is purely the fault of the market, not farming itself.

Re: Open Source Farming Robot

#105

Post by TheDong »

NilMostChill wrote: post #42
myprotegeai wrote: post #11

How many Farmbots would I need to feed 2 adults and 2 children year round? What challenges might I run into? Edit: Found a link to yield analysis https://farm.bot/pages/yield It appears the answer is however many Farmbots cover 549 square meters

This page has a section titled "Cups, Not Calories". It hurts my soul that anybody producing a table such as that is using something as vague as a "cup" in their calculations.

The unit of a "cup" there is sourced from the US government, and thus it's well known to be a volumetric measurement that is equal to 1/672 of a standard oil barrel's volume. It's not vague for US customers at least.

It hurts my soul that it's using a volumetric measurement for leafy food, like if you cut lettuce leaves into pieces, they have the same nutrients but take up way less space, so 3 cups of roughly cut lettuce leaves is different from 3 cups of finely chopped lettuce leaves, which is also different from 3 cups of uncut lettuce leaves. Just give it to us in mass or calories please (like grams or fractions of an oil barrel's mass, or fraction of a barrel of oil's calories and nutrients).

Re: Open Source Farming Robot

#106

Post by torlok »

This is a Juicero of farming. The whole setup is easily replaced with a raised garden bed and a drip hose. Hearing about this a few years back, I was hoping it would at least do some weed control, but no.

Re: Open Source Farming Robot

#107

Post by torlok »

owenpalmer wrote: post #57

Would be interesting if they could get it to work in a circular pattern with multiple layers, where one FarmBot traverses each ring of the garden's "onion". For an optimized garden to feed a family, you need 549 square meters[0], which is a circle with a diameter of 26.4 meters (86.7 ft). That's all the vegetables for your entire family, mostly automated. That's a future I would love to see, even though it's way less…

> That's all the vegetables for your entire family, mostly automated.

This thing only drills the seeds and waters the plants.

Re: Open Source Farming Robot

#108

Post by weweweoo »

rvense wrote: post #94
tuatoru wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I was told that water beads on leaf surfaces act as lenses, creating burnt spots on the leaves. So water at night.

I was told to water at night because it doesn't make much sense to pour water on the ground only for it to evaporate before it goes where it's needed.

Well, that obviously depends from how sunny and warm it is.

Re: Open Source Farming Robot

#109

Post by ansible »

kyriakos wrote: post #53
0cf8612b2e1e wrote: post #14

Cool project, but $2800 for the basic kit is a lot to stomach given how many things can go wrong with robotics.

My first thought was exactly this. How reliable can it be to run autonomously and how long before parts start breaking down. On the other hand this is cheaper than apple vision pro.

It doesn't really look like it can handle weather or ordinary dirt getting into the belt drive and rails. Automating the watering isn't hard with existing technology. if it can't remove weeds, I don't see what's the point.

Re: Open Source Farming Robot

#110

Post by jannyfer »

NilMostChill wrote: post #71
nilsherzig wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think "cup" is one of these American units, it's about 236ml

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cup_(unit) . American legal cup ? metric cup ? Canadian cup ? or one of the other ones. Even if you narrow it to just the roughly the US you still have 4 + metric , so 5 different options. and that doesn't even account for people just using the cup they have to hand. It's not a rant at you, it's frustration with non-specific, arbitrary units.

WAIT.

US cups and metric cups are different?

Post reply on HN