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Open Source Farming Robot

farm.bot

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Re: Open Source Farming Robot

#271

Post by naasking »

James_K wrote: post #182
naasking wrote: post #119

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

They have these things called farmers' markets where you can buy fresh produce and it's much cheaper than $4000. You could probably buy fresh produce for a whole year and not have it come to that total. A year's worth of food is likely more than the robot could produce in your lifetime, so the market is a much better deal.

So in your mind, economics is the only value worth considering. So I suppose that entails that you were paid to write your reply to my comment? Why else would you bother engaging on this site if you're not getting some monetary deal out of it?

Re: Open Source Farming Robot

#272

Post by naasking »

devjab wrote: post #270
naasking wrote: post #119

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 wi…

I agree that the watering adapter is basically pointless when this thing is built on a raised bed. You can build the watering into the base of the bed with a simple water level sensor and let capillary action wick the water up to the roots.

The gantry design is limited for sure, but extending it into a more independent system might be possible, and the software they wrote to manage crops could potentially be quite useful with a more general system. It seems like a final v1 for a "farm bot".

Re: Open Source Farming Robot

#273

Post by quijoteuniv »

James_K wrote: post #199
quijoteuniv wrote: post #138

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I do not understand why so much negativity against an open source project. And anyway game changing seldom comes within the same industry.

The negativity comes from the fact that it's obviously stupid to spend $4000 on an AI robot that waters plants on a single small plot of land. The selling point of this product is "I want fresh food but I don't want to garden" which is much better served by going to a market and buying the food from a farmer.

I would argue that negativity comes from you even if the project is not that great yet. But i see passion, openness and someone trying to tackle a very big problem. What did you do today? I tell you what I did… i have been negative with post that are negative about a project. So peace on earth and hopefully we can make together a better world.

Re: Open Source Farming Robot

#274

Post by nozzlegear »

efilife wrote: post #247
TheDong wrote: post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"other factors" can be treated as a singular group noun if you want, so I think both are correct. By example: "There are likely to be cows over that hill" - correct, many cows "There is likely to be a herd of cows over that hill" - correct, one herd "There are likely to be other factors" - correct, many factors "There is likely to be a number of other factors" - correct, one collection of many factors "There are like…

I agree with all of your examples. But his sentence misses the crucial to be part to be correct. I'm just wondering whether this is deliberate and just a way of speaking informal english, or just the person doesn't know it's incorrect

I'm a native English speaker, and if I'd spoken what they said out loud then I would've said "there's" precisely because "there're" is more difficult to pronounce. It's also how I'd write it, even though I know "there is" is not correct; it's just an evolution of the language, like "ain't".

Re: Open Source Farming Robot

#275

Post by asdf6969 »

__MatrixMan__ wrote: post #268
asdf6969 wrote: post #256

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/north/matthew-clarke-youtube-...

Re: Open Source Farming Robot

#276

Post by freedomben »

bboygravity wrote: post #147
cbsmith wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Drip irrigation is kind of a thing out here in the desert...

And then there is burried drip irrigation...

Yes, but as GP said that doesn't scale. I live in an agriculture heavy community in the desert (mountain-west USA), and drip irrigation is only really used for small gardens and landscaping. Anyone with an acre or more of crops is not using drip.

I certainly agree that drip is the ideal, and when you aren't doing drip you want to minimize the standing water on leaves, but if I were designing this project I would design for scale.

Re: Open Source Farming Robot

#277

Post by [deleted] »

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.

[deleted]

Re: Open Source Farming Robot

#278

Post by waldothedog »

RobotToaster wrote: post #122
Grimblewald wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Part of the problem is water composition. Water which contians fertilizers, surfactants etc is going to damage the protective waxy layer on leaves, while rain water will do so less. Next, when watering youre doing so as frequently as the plants can make use of, to encourage maximal growth rates. It would never rain that frequently. finally, the size of droplets is different. Rain drops tend to be big and fat and roll…

Why would you water your plants with surfactants/soap? Genuine question, does it help the plants in some way?

I believe this is common for large scale irrigation and ferti-gation as it breaks surface tension and helps the water flow

Re: Open Source Farming Robot

#279

Post by cl42 »

A lot of people are criticizing this product. Does anyone know what "best in class" small-scale farming or gardening projects are? Very curious! Also any community recommendations would be great.

Re: Open Source Farming Robot

#280

Post by freedomben »

tonyarkles wrote: post #168
SoftTalker wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Doesn't rain fall on the leaves as much as the soil?

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.

Yep. I recently visited some high end vineyards in Arizona, and the grapes really thrive because of how dry it is. They are able to irrigate carefully to avoid wetting the tops of the plants.
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