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Open Source Farming Robot

farm.bot

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Re: Open Source Farming Robot

#261

Post by AngryData »

James_K wrote: post #176
apexalpha wrote: post #167

This looks fun but not really useful. My hope would be that in 20 years everyone has a little bot that 24/7 runs a garden for you and provides every family with 80% of their vegetable need. Imagine the amount of acreage we could return to nature / co2 sinking.

Each person owning their own farm is orders of magnitude less efficient that one large farm serving many people.

In some ways yes, in other ways it isn't though. Far less shipping, and some fruits and vegetables are just straight up better and healthier when harvested ripe instead of early so they can be shipped and stored. There is also a lot more wasted food that doesn't sell in a store well because they don't give you a discount for lesser specimens, but that people can and would eat otherwise.

Re: Open Source Farming Robot

#262

Post by throwup238 »

amoshebb wrote: post #254
tonyarkles wrote: post #168

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Here's a wild thing: at many of the high end vineyards they'll do low-level helicopter flights over the vines every time it rains to blow the water off the leaves and fruit specifically to prevent infection and rot.

I’ve heard of this for frost prevention, but never rain. Do you know of a specific vineyard doing this?

Napa and Sonoma vineyards have been doing it for decades: https://www.sfgate.com/business/article/vintners-rush-to-dry... (dated 1997)

It’s pretty rare though. They usually only do it when it rains heavily right before harvest.

Re: Open Source Farming Robot

#263

Post by pydry »

bagels wrote: post #227
pydry wrote: post #194

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is probably not true for a lot of produce with a limited shelf life. If you factor in wastage and the expensive supply chain logistics for things that spoil quickly it's probably cheaper to grow them closer to the point of use, especially if you can keep down labor costs with automation. Tastier and more nutritious too.

Farmers get their inputs much cheaper than I do, especially water. Water is essentially free compared to residential rates at about 100x cheaper.

I dont think water forms a large % of the cost of fresh veg - certainly not relative to logistics and spoilage.

Re: Open Source Farming Robot

#264

Post by portpecos »

ein0p wrote: post #92
getpost wrote: post #30

It sill looks like the software is written by people who don't know how to care for plants. You don't spray water on leaves as shown in the video; you'll just end up with fungus infestation. You water the soil and nourish the microorganisms that facilitate nutrient absorption in roots. But, I don't see any reason the technology can't be adapted to do the right thing.

I had the same thoughts when watching this. Cucumbers either require twine, in which case they grow quite tall), or each plant will take up half that raised bed. Tomatoes are not planted directly from a seed, you first need to grow seedlings, a very laborious process that’s hard to automate. Tomatoes can also get quite tall, with some plants exceeding 5 feet. You don’t need such elaborate setups for irrigation either…

I can’t emphasize this enough. I mean, I’m using the GardenGrid watering system and an Orbit automated timer to water my 8 raised bed. So the intensive watering problem is solved.

Automatically planting the seeds? I can take it or leave it.

But the really intensive work is pulling those extraordinarily hardy weeds and pest control.

The cost of this thing at nearly $3000 including taxes is just too high for effectively an automated watering system that is easily solved at HomeDepot and the GardenGrid.

Re: Open Source Farming Robot

#265

Post by seabrookmx »

efilife wrote: post #248
ac29 wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Its written the way it'd be spoken, which seems fine for informal writing

The point is it shouldn't be spoken like this. It's just wrong. I'm wondering whether the person is unaware or is this some slang I don't know about. I've seen a bunch of people speak like this, I'm trying to understand the reason

According to whom?

Why are we grammar policing on hackernews? This is a tech and startup forum not a language forum.

Re: Open Source Farming Robot

#266

Post by kumarvvr »

alsodumb wrote: post #251

This project sucks ass - I know some research groups (non-engineering, they were more ag programs) who purchased it from them for a few thousand dollars and pretty much shelved it after a few months - unreliable hardware, buggy software, minimal support - all in all it would probably have been much more easier if we hired a bunch of engineering undergrads to build something like this from scratch.

I thought you could use this as a springboard to improve and customize further, then put back those improvements into the open source project.

Re: Open Source Farming Robot

#268

Post by __MatrixMan__ »

asdf6969 wrote: post #256
apexalpha wrote: post #167

This looks fun but not really useful. My hope would be that in 20 years everyone has a little bot that 24/7 runs a garden for you and provides every family with 80% of their vegetable need. Imagine the amount of acreage we could return to nature / co2 sinking.

In 20 years most people won’t be able to afford a yard

In that case, who cares what the bank says about whose yard is whose? Find a patch of ground and grow your food there.

We only uphold property rights because enough of us see a benefit in doing so. If that changes, so can we.

Re: Open Source Farming Robot

#269

Post by __MatrixMan__ »

constantcrying wrote: post #118

Seems an interesting engineering project, but like a terrible product. Who is the customer? If you like gardening, why would you pay thousands of dollars so that you don't need to do it? If you don't like gardening, you obviously wouldn't be interested in having a robot do it for you. I just can't imagine who would buy this. Gardening can be done very cheap and I believe that most people do it because they like spend…

It took steam engines 100 years to reliably outperform horses. Maybe in 100 years the situation will be different. Until then, I might buy one because I want to tinker with it. After all, it's 100 years of tinkering that got us there with steam engines.

Re: Open Source Farming Robot

#270

Post by devjab »

naasking wrote: post #119
constantcrying wrote: post #118

Seems an interesting engineering project, but like a terrible product. Who is the customer? If you like gardening, why would you pay thousands of dollars so that you don't need to do it? If you don't like gardening, you obviously wouldn't be interested in having a robot do it for you. I just can't imagine who would buy this. Gardening can be done very cheap and I believe that most people do it because they like spend…

> If you don't like gardening, you obviously wouldn't be interested in having a robot do it for you Why? Do people who don't like gardening not like gardens or fresh produce? I just don't see how you reached this conclusion.

I think this is a fairly valid point. From my own anecdotal perspective I don’t much like “gardening” but when we wanted to grow vegetables we did research enough to know that this product is basically a waste of money. If you want a self-watering system you’re going to go with that, and maybe even have some fish for cleaning. If you just want easy low maintenance vegetables you can build a raised bed and water it with a hose on evenings during a dry period. That’s basically all you need to do.

I’ve removed a ton of weeds from between our tiles, I’ve removed exactly three from the raised bed. The watering takes like 30 seconds a few nights a week. The real trick is to plant something with a high output and no maintenance required like squash.

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