FarmBot: Open-source automated farming machine • Hacker News Board

Re: FarmBot: Open-source automated farming machine

#41

Post by _mulder_ » Fri, Sep 27, 2013, 1:55 PM UTC

roryaronson wrote: post #20

_mulder_ wrote: post #2

"If you have another way to donate in mind" Seems like this would be an ideal project for a kickstarter, that way at least the project could create a more informative project page and detail exactly how they hope to spend the money with perhaps the goal of building a prototype in a given time-scale. At the moment it looks a bit too much like someone's had a great idea, done a bit of initial design and thrown together…

Hi, my name is Rory and I am the one behind the project. We are working towards a crowdfunding launch in 2014 as stated on page 47 of the white paper: http://www.scribd.com/doc/169536137/FarmBot-Humanity-s-Open-... We've received a good amount of donations so far and will be ordering materials for the initial design this week and next. I'm currently recruiting other students at my local university to work on the proj…

Thanks for clearing it up. However, I'm still not sure on what my donations would be used for at this stage (I guess you could say a lack of transparency) but I wish you the best of luck and hope you get enough backers to make this work.

Could be something of REAL benefit to the world, which is more than most HN stories can say.

Re: FarmBot: Open-source automated farming machine

#42

Post by smoorman1024 » Fri, Sep 27, 2013, 2:34 PM UTC

keenerd wrote: post #22

siavosh wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As someone who knows nothing about farming or gardening, I'll defer to the points you made as they sound very sensible. But as a software guy with an interest in salt-of-the-earth hobbies, I'd love to play with one (if I had a backyard that is). The thought of a robot that runs on a seasonal calendar that automatically harvests fruits and vegetables for my salad is too cool. To peer out your kitchen window and see a…

> But as a software guy with an interest in salt-of-the-earth hobbies, I'd love to play with one. Like you said, high-tech outdoors is troublesome. If you want to get a head start on this sort of thing buy an outdoor robot chasis (or make one if you can hold a screwdriver, it'll save you a grand or two). Throw on a kinect, all the cameras you can fit and all the lidar you can afford. First, teach it what rain is and…

If this device was remotely managed and you had access to the sensors mentioned in the white paper then the tasks above may not be that hard for smaller plots of land.

Teaching it what rain is? How about a query to Yahoo Weather.

Teach it what ripeness is? Imagine this device taking pictures of each plant every day and emailing individual images to you. Start out by manually training on the corpus based on what you think is ripe or not ripe. From their you would have a good stepping stone to start machine learning based on color and size of the plant. Same goes for unidentified plants in the garden that may be weeds.

I think the idea of total automation and remote sensors could make managing a farm a one person job.

Re: FarmBot: Open-source automated farming machine

#43

Post by speleding » Fri, Sep 27, 2013, 3:05 PM UTC

keenerd wrote: post #16

As someone who does farming (part time), I don't see these being practical. For low value bulk crops (corn, wheat, soybeans) the robot is too expensive and existing mechanization is too good. Even for high value stuff (grapes and other fruit) it will be too expensive. Maybe inside a highly controlled greenhouse this will be practical, but there are no food crops that are economical to grow inside a greenhouse. (It is…

"there are no food crops that are economical to grow inside a greenhouse"

The Netherlands has so many greenhouses they can seen from the space station without a telescope, and many of them grow food crops (tomatoes and paprika being the largest two)

Re: FarmBot: Open-source automated farming machine

#44

Post by nooneelse » Mon, Sep 30, 2013, 8:15 PM UTC

keenerd wrote: post #22

siavosh wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As someone who knows nothing about farming or gardening, I'll defer to the points you made as they sound very sensible. But as a software guy with an interest in salt-of-the-earth hobbies, I'd love to play with one (if I had a backyard that is). The thought of a robot that runs on a seasonal calendar that automatically harvests fruits and vegetables for my salad is too cool. To peer out your kitchen window and see a…

> But as a software guy with an interest in salt-of-the-earth hobbies, I'd love to play with one. Like you said, high-tech outdoors is troublesome. If you want to get a head start on this sort of thing buy an outdoor robot chasis (or make one if you can hold a screwdriver, it'll save you a grand or two). Throw on a kinect, all the cameras you can fit and all the lidar you can afford. First, teach it what rain is and…

> ...just have it log findings and generate reports.

And send you a text if it thinks it sees a Hornworm larva on your tomatoes, so you can rush home.