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Open Source Farming Robot

farm.bot

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Re: Open Source Farming Robot

#151

Post by dnautics »

hinkley wrote: post #137
kortex wrote: post #34

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…

There's a weird sort of reverse classism I saw in my relatives going up. You might summarize it as 'people without dirt under their nails don't understand shit'. As someone who went through endurance sports, being the fix-it guy, and a CS program I always sort of had one foot in both worlds and didn't really engage in this kind of rhetoric. But as I've been accumulating more woodworking tools and getting a lot of dir…

> This device is going to gum up

You say that like this device hasn't been around for years, accumulating revisions, upgrades, and user stories.

Re: Open Source Farming Robot

#152

Post by bsedlm »

bserge wrote: post #76
woutgaze wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> a slug-hunting robot powered by fermented slugs Isn’t that called a duck?

Ha. But actually, if most people weren't so averse to biological organisms, perhaps we would've had computer controlled ducks, rats, hens and other small animals by now. Why bother reinventing the whole thing when you could just replace (part of) their brains. Experimentation would be pretty gruesome though.

what's wrong with language-controlled humans?

oh right, humans can't be property

Re: Open Source Farming Robot

#153

Post by Defenestresque »

jvanderbot wrote: post #102
nobody_nowhere wrote: post #65

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.

You can just surround the new plants with the plant guards that come with the robot.

Re: Open Source Farming Robot

#154

Post by TaylorAlexander »

kortex wrote: post #77
nobody_nowhere wrote: post #65

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.

Neat, and promising, though not the one I was thinking of. I think it might have been this one, Acorn by Twisted Fields: https://community.twistedfields.com/t/introducing-acorn-a-pr... https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NsyEIgKVM5E

Hey that’s my robot, thank you for sharing it!

I just published a new article to go with our latest video. This one takes a closer look at the vehicle subsystems.

https://community.twistedfields.com/t/a-closer-look-at-acorn...

Edit: just submitted it as an article on HN if anyone wants to give it their vote: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27634450

Re: Open Source Farming Robot

#155

Post by afrodc_ »

bluGill wrote: post #143
qq4 wrote: post #123

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Slightly off topic, but what is it about raised beds? Why not till and fertilize the soil you already have?

There are a few advantages: the beds are raised do you don't have to bend over as far to tend them. The beds make it obvious where the place to walk is. The beds mean instead of rows of plants you have a contained solid mess which in turn means more plants per area (this is good for some plants, bad for others). Tilling is bad for soil and should be avoided whenever possible, the beds make it easier to not disturb th…

Why is tilling bad for the soil? Genuinely curious as I've seen it as an option for my terrible salty clay soil at my house.

Re: Open Source Farming Robot

#156

Post by afrodc_ »

lwb wrote: post #125
qq4 wrote: post #123

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Slightly off topic, but what is it about raised beds? Why not till and fertilize the soil you already have?

Texas checking in -- the dirt in my backyard is full of clay and totally unsuitable for growing anything other than grass and weeds. Many places are like this.

Finally got a home and am finding the same thing here in central Texas. At least with the crap soil the builders use to form the land around the foundation. My plan is to attempt to grow more deep rooted plants so their roots can break up the soil and die off when I trim them. Then aeration and topsoil composting. Still a work in progress so I have no idea if it'll work.

Re: Open Source Farming Robot

#157

Post by ducttapecrown »

swiftcoder wrote: post #111

I'm genuinely confused by this whole pitch. What practical problem does this solve? Planting seeds in a bed that size is at most an hour or two of work. Raised beds don't suffer from that many weeds, so weeding is a couple of hours per week at most. And drip irrigation with a timer can be had for a few dollars.

This solves the practical problem of having a single robot that can plant, weed and water a raised bed. Looking through their twitter posts linked on the website, they've good a bunch of happy users .

Re: Open Source Farming Robot

#158

Post by mytailorisrich »

bobiny wrote: post #96
mytailorisrich wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, my understanding (and common advice) is actually not to water the leaves at all if possible as that has no benefit apart from helping diseases set in.

You can damage the plant if you water leaves in bright sunshine, because water will act as a lens and leaves will get burned. Otherwise I'd follow nature: plants get water when it rains, so leaves should have some water too.

Depending on the species it may make sense to raise the humidity in the air (that's especially valid for indoor plants or tropical plants in greenhouses, hence misting). But watering the leaves is not needed and is pretty much useless to the plant. In nature of course plants get wet under the rain but, as mentioned, this helps diseases (moulds, mildew, virii, etc) take hold so in general it's best avoided if at all possible.

Re: Open Source Farming Robot

#159

Post by GVIrish »

d--b wrote: post #51
jasondozell wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That’s not that true and the robot will hardly help. The reason people don’t do it is that commercial farming is so efficient once you factor in costs growing your own is not cheaper than buying from supermarket.

People don't do it because each hour you spend in your garden is an hour you could have spent doing something else. The problem is not that you have to spend half an hour a day to do it, the problem is that it takes weeks of spending half an hour a day to get anything. And as a beginner, there is a good chance that you're going to screw something up. A lot of people prefer spending half an hour a day learning italian…

Nah it doesn't take anywhere near that amount of time to raise some produce. Maybe a half hour total per week, if that.

Some stuff is easier to grow, some is harder, but for example I barely did anything on my strawberry patch this year other than picking them when they got ripe. I'd say I spent maybe 15 minutes a month on the strawberries.

Now if you're trying to grow a lot of stuff then the time investment might increase but most backyard gardens don't take up that much time once you've planted everything.

Re: Open Source Farming Robot

#160

Post by bluGill »

afrodc_ wrote: post #155
bluGill wrote: post #143

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are a few advantages: the beds are raised do you don't have to bend over as far to tend them. The beds make it obvious where the place to walk is. The beds mean instead of rows of plants you have a contained solid mess which in turn means more plants per area (this is good for some plants, bad for others). Tilling is bad for soil and should be avoided whenever possible, the beds make it easier to not disturb th…

Why is tilling bad for the soil? Genuinely curious as I've seen it as an option for my terrible salty clay soil at my house.

Because it destories the root structure built up in the ground over the years. Those roots then break down quickly, and in turn the whole microbe profile is different. Sometimes tilling is still the best thing to do, but it isn't a good thing and should be avoided.

On a different note, tilling also costs large amounts of energy. The less tilling your do, the less CO2 you are putting into the atmosphere (even if you do the tilling by hand with a shovel you are still emitting more CO2 than if you just sat in your easy-chair)

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