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Open Source Farming Robot

farm.bot

351–360 of 369 posts

Re: Open Source Farming Robot

#351

Terrible design. Modular hydroponic pods have always been a better idea and if someone handed me 100 million I'd use it to develop standardised farming skyscrapers/towers to hydroponically grow food in towns/local communities with minimal water, electricity usage and human intervention. It's so crazy that we have the tech to do this sort of thing now, but don't. We could do so much if things weren't so profit focusse…

> develop standardised farming skyscrapers/towers to hydroponically grow food in

Land use for vegetable farming is really not an issue. Just build your hydroponics setup on the ground, you'll cut costs by an order of magnitude.

If you actually want to reduce land use, get people to eat less meat. The crops that use the most land by far are corn and soy, and most of those ends up just being fed to livestock.

Re: Open Source Farming Robot

#352

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I have clearly stated what i think they meant. Hey and you were wrong. You are pretty bad at understanding what other people are saying. > how what i said was related to the discussion It wasn't related because the other person was correct in that you misunderstood my statement.

> Hey and you were wrong. You are pretty bad at understanding what other people are saying. Or you are bad at conveying an explicit meaning. > It wasn't related because the other person was correct in that you misunderstood my statement. I've outlined why i thought what i did, if that was a misunderstanding of your intention I'm willing to accept that, doesn't mean what you said was clear.

> at conveying an explicit meaning.

The other person understood me just fine, and also noticed how obvious my statement was, and how you avoided it.

> doesn't mean what you said was clear.

Oh it absolutely does. The other person understood it perfectly.

Re: Open Source Farming Robot

#353

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Hey and you were wrong. You are pretty bad at understanding what other people are saying. Or you are bad at conveying an explicit meaning. > It wasn't related because the other person was correct in that you misunderstood my statement. I've outlined why i thought what i did, if that was a misunderstanding of your intention I'm willing to accept that, doesn't mean what you said was clear.

> at conveying an explicit meaning. The other person understood me just fine, and also noticed how obvious my statement was, and how you avoided it. > doesn't mean what you said was clear. Oh it absolutely does. The other person understood it perfectly.

> The other person understood me just fine, and also noticed how obvious my statement was, and how you avoided it.

Of a sample size of two that's a 50% failure rate.

You stated an us vs them, i pointed out that drawing an us vs them assumes that us and them are different.

That you apparently meant something different is odd to me, but you do you.

> Oh it absolutely does. The other person understood it perfectly.

Again, 50% failure rate.

If you wish to conclude that a 50% failure rate makes something obvious in favour of one side, feel free.

Re: Open Source Farming Robot

#354
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.

Shove some Bravo once in a while in the solution and your fungus worry is gone. If you're going with a chemical solution with fertilizer, etc, you might as well use other chemicals like fungicides and pesticides.

Re: Open Source Farming Robot

#355
post #106

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.

It’s a bit like a pick-n-place and conformal coat setup for circuit boards except gardening has none of the requirements for precision of circuit boards.

This kind of thing seems to be happening more and more as people get more and more disconnected from the specific fundamental reasons why we do things.

This is like building and programming a home-building robot to build one house, and then just leaving it on site to redo the roof every 20 years.

Re: Open Source Farming Robot

#356

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> at conveying an explicit meaning. The other person understood me just fine, and also noticed how obvious my statement was, and how you avoided it. > doesn't mean what you said was clear. Oh it absolutely does. The other person understood it perfectly.

> The other person understood me just fine, and also noticed how obvious my statement was, and how you avoided it. Of a sample size of two that's a 50% failure rate. You stated an us vs them, i pointed out that drawing an us vs them assumes that us and them are different. That you apparently meant something different is odd to me, but you do you. > Oh it absolutely does. The other person understood it perfectly. Agai…

> Of a sample size

Well, actually it's extremely obvious there you aren't actually attempting to understand my argument.

The other person noticed it as well.

Notice, how instead of going on about this, you could have instead gone back to my message and actually tried to figure out what my argument was.

But you didn't.

Because you aren't interested in understanding what my argument was.

> that a 50% failure rate

Oh you still aren't getting it.

It's not a 50% failure rate. It is a 0% failure rate. Instead it is that someone else noticed they you werent even trying.

Of course you aren't going to admit that.

But if someone else backs me up, thats really good evidence.

I am fully confident that the success rate is 100% and actually you could understand the argument if you stopped doing what we both know you are doing right now.

Re: Open Source Farming Robot

#357

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Same goes for cooking your own food, doing your own laundry and picking your own clothes. Efficiency has its place in times of scarcity, but there is a cultural component on top. Part is education, part is carrying and renewing traditions, part is the ikea effect, sure. These robots will not help avoid famine, but they will help rich first world people be more cognizant of food and agriculture. Which in turn will hel…

Rich people are the healthiest in society. They eat the most fresh food already. The people eating calorie-dense industrial food are mostly too poor to afford a $4000 robot and a plot of land to put it on, especially when it produces a very small amount of fresh food.

You're very right. And growing food is not cheap either, the initial investment is on the hundreds, even for a small vegetable garden and it takes time for the plants to grow, the yield is very small, counting the loss to pest and critters and it's a daily effort to care for the plants. After all of this, there are people who leaves too far north and the season is too short, or in too dry area, the thing is a nightmare. I love doing my own vegetable garden, but damn, the farms market is much easier.

Re: Open Source Farming Robot

#358

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Are moisture sensors any good? I always read about how useless they are, but maybe that’s just a certain type? What would you recommend?

Moisture sensors that measure conductivity are pretty useless unless frequently recalibrated but time domain reflectometry sensors are much better and more accurate. I use the VH400 from Vegetronix: https://www.vegetronix.com/Products/VH400/

Yes, conductivity is pretty useless over time.

Re: Open Source Farming Robot

#359

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

When it comes to buying things, I would say yes. I could buy an expensive robot to grow a small amount of fresh food for me, or I could buy the same fresh food for much cheaper from a farmer. The former has little appeal when the latter exists.

So you're not the target customer. Which is fine.

Re: Open Source Farming Robot

#360
post #87
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.

Probably? But spraying water on leaves is not only the way water naturally gets to plants, it's often the only practical way to water crops at scale. Center-pivot irrigation has dramatically increased the amount of and reliability of arable cropland, while being dramatically less sensitive to topography and preparation than flood irrigation. The advice to "water the soil, not the leaves" is founded in manual watering…

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