25 ms·

FarmBot – Open-Source CNC Farming [video]

227 points by ctingom 10y ago

IvanK_net 10y ago
I think it is the "remake" of a harvester. It is still a machine, that moves above a field on wheels and performs some useful activity on the place where it is located, before moving to the next place.
ccallebs 10y ago
Wow. Just wow. I don't know that I've been this excited about a piece of machinery before. This product has the potential to completely change the way we obtain and consume food. I understand it's very niche at the moment. And the price tag will likely be huge for the first run. But this is a great first step and I'll try to pre-order a kit.
- Loughla 10y ago
  >This product has the potential to completely change the way we obtain and consume food. That's seems like an unbelievably large statement to make. Can you explain what you mean by all this excitement?
  - ccallebs 10y ago
    This product allows a person that knows nothing about farming to be a farmer. How much space does the average person have in their back yard? Sitting idle, wasted. Not doing anything but providing a bit of aesthetic appeal. If the price point gets low enough, if construction is easy enough, and if enough people latch onto the movement this could be a game changer. Even if 10% of a family's food comes from Farmbot, that's 10% of food that doesn't need to be shipped across country for their consumption. This is essentially a 3D printer for food.
    - MustardTiger 10y ago
      >This product allows a person that knows nothing about farming to be a farmer No it does not. It allows people who want to garden to garden. But people who want to garden can already garden. Your packet of seeds tells you right on it how deep to plant and how far apart. That's all this is giving you.
      - ccallebs 10y ago
        There are a lot of nuances to planting that the back of a seed packet will not prepare you for. There are plants you don't want close to each other. There are plants that require more irrigation than their neighbors. The soil pH matters, pests are varied between species, and temperature levels can be paramount. Planting time absolutely matters. If you have ever tried to grow more than a few things in a garden, you realize exactly how complicated it can be. And while the product at hand does not address all of those things, it lays a foundation for a future where it could. The framework is built and it's open source.
        MustardTiger 10y ago
        I operate a CSA and grow thousands of dollars of food every year. I am quite aware of how incredibly simple and easy it is. You are listing off things that aren't really significant issues, and which this device does not address anyways.
        ccallebs 10y ago
        > I operate a CSA and grow thousands of dollars of food every year. That's great! And at the level you're at, the product probably doesn't make much sense. Everything is easy once you learn how to do it. I'm curious which of the things I listed aren't significant issues? They're all things I've came across when trying to grow food. I do agree that the current incarnation of this product fails to address those things, but the maker community will surely expand upon the platform. It appears to be extraordinarily modular.
        10y ago
    - dbcurtis 10y ago
      > How much space does the average person have in their back yard? Not nearly enough. In Sili Valley, I live on a 8000 sq ft lot. In much of the USA, people live on 1/4 to 1/2 acre lots. A garden that will produce enough fresh produce during the growing season to feed a family of 4 during the season along with enough to preserve for the off season is bigger than that lot, even before you subtract space for the house. I invite you to do the math. My mother's garden fed us the year around. That garden was bigger than my current city lot.
      - ccallebs 10y ago
        I'm definitely not suggesting that self-subsistent farming will be common with the product. Certainly not in SV! But it doesn't have to, right? If it can augment your grocery trips and prevent however much food you would've purchased from being shipped cross country, it's definitely left a mark. I didn't mean to suggest it would supplant the supermarket, only allow people to more easily grow their own food.
- djrogers 10y ago
  > This product has the potential to completely change the way we obtain and consume food It's capable of at best making the production of a few weeks worth of food somewhat easier. It's cool and all, but this particular 'bot is far from revolutionary.
  - ccallebs 10y ago
    In its current incarnation, it's not going to be replacing the supermarket anytime soon. I'm not trying to suggest that it will. But I do think it has the potential to disrupt. I own a small farm myself. If the price point were low enough, I could easily set up acres of this technology and map out my crops using my computer. It could keep track of when crops needed to be harvested, when I needed to weed, how much I need to plant of one thing for a season. And then eventually could do those things for me.
    - VLM 10y ago
      "I could easily set up acres of this technology" via the magic of the internet, those acres need not be contiguous. Which is in itself rather fascinating. Rather than signing up for the local CSA I'd sign up for someone to monitor and run my robo farm.
    - MustardTiger 10y ago
      >If the price point were low enough, I could easily set up acres of this technology and map out my crops using my computer. It could keep track of when crops needed to be harvested, when I needed to weed, how much I need to plant of one thing for a season. All of that is just garden planning software, which has existed for 20+ years.
- MustardTiger 10y ago
  >This product has the potential to completely change the way we obtain and consume food. How? It is completely useless for farming, which is where over 99% of our food comes from. So even if it completely changed gardening, it would have almost no impact at all on the way we obtain and consume food. And all it does is plant seeds, that doesn't change gardening at all.
joshpadnick 10y ago
What a cool concept! If any members of FarmBot team are watching this thread, could you comment on why you decided to make everything open source? Clearly, it's an awesome benefit for the community, but how does it also serve FarmBot the company? I'm asking b/c I'm curious about business models that build heavily on open source.
- deegles 10y ago
  They could charge for support, custom designs, consulting etc or sell fully built systems or kits. There are still plenty of options.
VLM 10y ago
In my climate, I get a little extreme fighting the cold. A fairly obvious interchangeable tooling suggestion is some manner of hook or electromagnet or "whatever" to manipulate a cold frame door. Just a helpful suggestion.
coenhyde 10y ago
Awesome! I think i'll build this on my balcony! I've acually been planning something similar in my head for years. But never actually did anything about it.
carapace 10y ago
I like this but I think a crane rather than track and gantry makes more sense, eh?
- betimsl 10y ago
  A drone maybe? (even better no?) :-)
Jack000 10y ago
site seems to be down? I'm guessing it's this project: https://hackaday.io/project/2552-farmbot-open-source-cnc-farming https://hackaday.io/project/2552-farmbot-open-source-cnc-far...
- roryaronson 10y ago
  Thanks for commenting this! Yes, we just got a huge surge of traffic and our site crashed. Haha it should be up now. I'll be monitoring it. - Rory (founder at farmbot.io) (And yes, that is our entry on Hackaday!)
  - roryaronson 10y ago
    Oh god. Haha too much traffic!!! Beefing up our server now...
exar0815 10y ago
Really nice concept. Especially with greenhouses, you can build large systems of it in them. But, and don't Vote me down, considering current events, how long until we see a "Weedbot"?
- deleted 10y ago
  [deleted]
- brixon 10y ago
  Since it is not illegal everywhere, why would this be a problem?
- joshvm 10y ago
  As the author of a recently-linked post about mushroom growing pointed out, home-grown drugs have encouraged a level of experimentation and ingenuity that is rarely found among most gardeners. This is partly due to risk/reward: if you've spent $100 on seeds, you want to make damn sure they crop. People go to great lengths to figure out how to get the best yield from their weed plants, how to precisely control the growing conditions and so on. There's also a strong culture of sharing advice between growers which helps. However, probably a better solution for something like weed would be this: http://openag.media.mit.edu/ http://openag.media.mit.edu/
dustinmoorenet 10y ago
I like that the design is open-source but it is just putting seeds in the ground and watering them. That is not a complex task. I believe this http://openag.media.mit.edu/ http://openag.media.mit.edu/ is a better system for food growth.
Loughla 10y ago
I can't get your site to load, so I checked out the hackaday page. Trying not to be overly cynical here, but how is this worth the cost? It appears that it simply plants, waters, and detects/removes weeds. In a 1,250sq.ft. garden, we invest less than 2 hours per week on these tasks. How would this be scalable? How do you spell scalable? How would this justify its cost? How does it withstand being outside all year, year round? How does it not just destroy your crops when they grow tall? How could this possibly improve on current farming methods (outside of removing chemical weed-killers maybe)? I understand it's in its infancy, but I'm genuinely having a hard time with this.
- brixon 10y ago
  Might be cool if you can stick it on the back of a tractor and have it do these things while in motion.
  - Loughla 10y ago
    Even with auto-steer technology and GPS, I can't see how it would be accurate enough to be useful over any size field. You would spend more machine/human time scanning and driving, more money in fuel, and more energy in general than if you were to just plant, spray, and irrigate.
- beardicus 10y ago
  > How would this be scalable? Extend the x and y axis? > How would this justify its cost? Presumably by saving costs elsewhere? Labor, chemical inputs. Not saying it's there yet though, but why should it be? > How does it withstand being outside all year, year round? A cursory glance at the specs indicates that they've considered waterproofing at least. I imagine "the elements" will prove even more challenging than expected, but it's not like this wasn't considered. > How does it not just destroy your crops when they grow tall? The y axis is up pretty tall, and the manipulator is pretty narrow to get down in between plants. Clearly it is not advisable to grow crops that are taller than will fit in the machine. > How could this possibly improve on current farming methods Automation? We don't expect Burger King robots to improve on culinary techniques. I feel this is mostly interesting for repeatable research uses, but as basic manual labor savings it's interesting as well. (I am in no way affiliated with this project... just seems easy to see the potential, and odd to treat a prototype as if it needs to make a business case right out of the gate)
nostromo 10y ago
This is cool but seems a tad over engineered. I have a garden. It uses a drip line that's buried in the ground. It's $10 worth of tubing from Lowes with a few holes where plants go. It's on a $15 timer that waters automatically once a day. I do, however, have to take a few minutes to put seeds in the ground. That said, I would be throwing money at the monitor right now if this thing was smart enough to identify weeds and remove them. (Maybe that's in the plans? They have a part for weeding shown.) But I love all these new ideas around farming. The most interesting is hydroponics considering how much more resourceful it is with water (sometimes using 90% less water per equal amount of harvest). Edit: for those asking, all I used was half inch black tubing (the kind they use for automated sprinkler systems), drilled small holes every 12 inches, buried it, hooked it up to a spigot with a timer, and that's it.
- mrfusion 10y ago
  How did you build that? I'd love to make something like that.
  - dexterdog 10y ago
    A drip line with a timer? This is low-tech stuff that's been available for quite some time. Search for B013JPIJG4 on Amazon.
    - VLM 10y ago
      While you're shopping at amazon there are $25 class kits that come with a water filter, backflow preventer, and pressure regulator. That's what I have on my container garden. Drip emitters are the kind of thing I should be 3-d printing but at $5 for 50 or whatever the going rate is...
  - adrusi 10y ago
    You just need a solenoid water valve to let the timer control the water flow. https://www.amazon.com/gp/aw/d/B00E1HXYQA/ref=mp_s_a_1_1?qid=1465333663&sr=8-1&pi=SL75_QL70&keywords=drip+hose https://www.amazon.com/gp/aw/d/B00E1HXYQA/ref=mp_s_a_1_1?qid... https://www.amazon.com/gp/aw/d/B00K0TKJCU/ref=mp_s_a_1_2?qid=1465333715&sr=8-2&pi=SL75_QL70&keywords=valve+electronic https://www.amazon.com/gp/aw/d/B00K0TKJCU/ref=mp_s_a_1_2?qid... https://www.amazon.com/gp/aw/d/B006LYHG42/ref=mp_s_a_1_1?qid=1465333779&sr=8-1&pi=SL75_QL70&keywords=electric+outdoor+timer https://www.amazon.com/gp/aw/d/B006LYHG42/ref=mp_s_a_1_1?qid...
rhgraysonii 10y ago
I've interacted with Rick a bit in the past and hes an awesome developer. Really glad to see progress continuing with this.
machbio 10y ago
Memories of Farmville - this is amazing but it wont work on the large scale, the models seem to slow to in its workflow to care for a larger area.
ElijahLynn 10y ago
Holy fucking amazing!
imaginenore 10y ago
I bet installing that thing, programming, and feeding it is at least an order of magnitude more time consuming than the actual farming by hand.
justsaysmthng 10y ago
This is pretty much how I see the future of agriculture. Give the FarmBot a bunch of wheels / robotic feet to move around and it could theoretically handle huge fields. The key thing here is the possibility to monitor each individual plant and react to changes in its development or environment (in contrast to modern industrial agriculture, were things are done with huge monster tractors). I'm sure it can/will be improved to serve more functions - like removing weeds and collecting pests without the need for herbicides or pesticides and so on. Eventually, these will all become software problems which the global programmer community will be more than glad to tackle. The most important thing about FarmBot and similar tech, though, is the potential to de-centralize agriculture again and make small-scale, local agriculture possible, without needing to employ human labor. Not only would this create a new market for high-tech agricultural tools and software and make growing your own food easy (even in the city !), it is a very welcome solution to the many environmental problems that large-scale industrial agriculture generates today. So I'm very optimistic and happy about this tech and I wish you guys all the luck.
- rmason 10y ago
  Sat watching that video and wondering if you could first lay down a layer of black plastic with holes punched in the right places, it would eliminate 95% of the weeding chores. http://www.amazon.com/Plastic-600ft-Embossed-Growerss-Solution/dp/B00BG9GQ0M http://www.amazon.com/Plastic-600ft-Embossed-Growerss-Soluti... Course it would help if the garden was on a slight incline with holes punched in the frame boards on one end to deal with draining off the occasional two inch rain.
  - HeyLaughingBoy 10y ago
    This actually already happens. There's a farm near my house doing it. I believe it's only cost effective for high-value crops, though.
- jonathankoren 10y ago
  > The key thing here is the possibility to monitor each individual plant and react to changes in its development or environment (in contrast to modern industrial agriculture, were things are done with huge monster tractors). It's called precision farming, and it's done today, with "huge monster tractors". Seriously folks, modern agriculture is an advanced multibillion dollar business which left the 19th century 200 years ago.
cconcepts 10y ago
This is clever, and I applaud CNC principles being applied in such a unique way. But once the planting and prep is done (which takes a few hours max for me to do by hand) I now have a several thousand dollar watering can..... Make no mistake, this is where agriculture is heading and the people behind this are obviously clever and innovative. I just don't think this is a very compelling product (outside of the "A robot planted my veges" kudos)......yet.
- hutzlibu 10y ago
  You could play with it, so that it does the weeding (and snailkilling) for you ...
  - cconcepts 10y ago
    Totally, which is why I added "...yet" Making dinner in the kitchen? Hit "Salad" on the app and have your farmbot harvest the ingredients for a 300g garden salad.... Lots of cool applications and I got prepared for "buying mode" when I watched the video. But three deep breaths reminded me that this wasn't going to return the value to my life that it had initially cost...yet
    - hutzlibu 10y ago
      Unfortunately yes, unless you want to play and mod with it, I also don't see it as a really usefull product, yet. But we are here on HN, right? ....
deleted 10y ago
[deleted]
jannyfer 10y ago
Interesting that people have a very different reaction when they see a working video and not just some ideas. Last time this was posted on Hacker News three years ago: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6451350 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6451350
gtvwill 10y ago
Holy crap is this thing for real? Sorry but this is straight up inefficiency in its finest. Honestly the amount material to produce one farm bot far out weighs the amount of produce in can produce. Like I hate monoculture farming but a 20 Ton tractor can service like 10 Thousand acres of dry area/irrigated cropping country a piece of piss, do it automated and by GPS and return Hundreds of Tons of produce. TBH if someone would just build me a robot that has 20 km range, can deal with crawling up hills and can identify coloured shapes and "pick" them (pneumatic suction would probably do it), We could put a few tens of thousand blueberry/coffee pickers out of business. FarmBot will not put anyone out of business. The Japanese Aeroponic farms have a better chance of being the future of production.
- coenhyde 10y ago
  You're missing the point/s. This is starting technology. Very rarely does something revolutionary start out more efficient and cost effective than the old way. Not to mention this project in its current status is aimed at hobbyists. PS I downvoted you for the negativity.
Animats 10y ago
This thing might be cost-effective if it were scaled up to round farm size. A standard center-pivot irrigator is 400 meters long. An arm that could travel along a track on the irrigator, do precision planting, and look at the plants might be useful. The amount of mechanism would be modest for the area covered.
cellularmitosis 10y ago
Using roller-skate wheels and having the gantry ride directly on top of the side-boards of the raised-bed garden would be a great way to reduce parts count here. https://youtu.be/3vgjJikt9B4?t=41s https://youtu.be/3vgjJikt9B4?t=41s
new_accnt 10y ago
Instead of using this cnc-like machine with tracks and stuff like that, wouldn't it be more cheap and simple to use a radial design like many large crop fields already use? It might remove the weed pulling feature in early iterations, but it seems much easier for just watering/nutrition.

227 points by ctingom 10y ago

I think it is the "remake" of a harvester. It is still a machine, that moves above a field on wheels and performs some useful activity on the place where it is located, before moving to the next place.

ccallebs 10y ago

Wow. Just wow. I don't know that I've been this excited about a piece of machinery before. This product has the potential to completely change the way we obtain and consume food. I understand it's very niche at the moment. And the price tag will likely be huge for the first run. But this is a great first step and I'll try to pre-order a kit.

Loughla 10y ago
>This product has the potential to completely change the way we obtain and consume food. That's seems like an unbelievably large statement to make. Can you explain what you mean by all this excitement?
- ccallebs 10y ago
  This product allows a person that knows nothing about farming to be a farmer. How much space does the average person have in their back yard? Sitting idle, wasted. Not doing anything but providing a bit of aesthetic appeal. If the price point gets low enough, if construction is easy enough, and if enough people latch onto the movement this could be a game changer. Even if 10% of a family's food comes from Farmbot, that's 10% of food that doesn't need to be shipped across country for their consumption. This is essentially a 3D printer for food.
  - MustardTiger 10y ago
    >This product allows a person that knows nothing about farming to be a farmer No it does not. It allows people who want to garden to garden. But people who want to garden can already garden. Your packet of seeds tells you right on it how deep to plant and how far apart. That's all this is giving you.
    - ccallebs 10y ago
      There are a lot of nuances to planting that the back of a seed packet will not prepare you for. There are plants you don't want close to each other. There are plants that require more irrigation than their neighbors. The soil pH matters, pests are varied between species, and temperature levels can be paramount. Planting time absolutely matters. If you have ever tried to grow more than a few things in a garden, you realize exactly how complicated it can be. And while the product at hand does not address all of those things, it lays a foundation for a future where it could. The framework is built and it's open source.
      - MustardTiger 10y ago
        I operate a CSA and grow thousands of dollars of food every year. I am quite aware of how incredibly simple and easy it is. You are listing off things that aren't really significant issues, and which this device does not address anyways.
        ccallebs 10y ago
        > I operate a CSA and grow thousands of dollars of food every year. That's great! And at the level you're at, the product probably doesn't make much sense. Everything is easy once you learn how to do it. I'm curious which of the things I listed aren't significant issues? They're all things I've came across when trying to grow food. I do agree that the current incarnation of this product fails to address those things, but the maker community will surely expand upon the platform. It appears to be extraordinarily modular.
        10y ago
  - dbcurtis 10y ago
    > How much space does the average person have in their back yard? Not nearly enough. In Sili Valley, I live on a 8000 sq ft lot. In much of the USA, people live on 1/4 to 1/2 acre lots. A garden that will produce enough fresh produce during the growing season to feed a family of 4 during the season along with enough to preserve for the off season is bigger than that lot, even before you subtract space for the house. I invite you to do the math. My mother's garden fed us the year around. That garden was bigger than my current city lot.
    - ccallebs 10y ago
      I'm definitely not suggesting that self-subsistent farming will be common with the product. Certainly not in SV! But it doesn't have to, right? If it can augment your grocery trips and prevent however much food you would've purchased from being shipped cross country, it's definitely left a mark. I didn't mean to suggest it would supplant the supermarket, only allow people to more easily grow their own food.
djrogers 10y ago
> This product has the potential to completely change the way we obtain and consume food It's capable of at best making the production of a few weeks worth of food somewhat easier. It's cool and all, but this particular 'bot is far from revolutionary.
- ccallebs 10y ago
  In its current incarnation, it's not going to be replacing the supermarket anytime soon. I'm not trying to suggest that it will. But I do think it has the potential to disrupt. I own a small farm myself. If the price point were low enough, I could easily set up acres of this technology and map out my crops using my computer. It could keep track of when crops needed to be harvested, when I needed to weed, how much I need to plant of one thing for a season. And then eventually could do those things for me.
  - VLM 10y ago
    "I could easily set up acres of this technology" via the magic of the internet, those acres need not be contiguous. Which is in itself rather fascinating. Rather than signing up for the local CSA I'd sign up for someone to monitor and run my robo farm.
  - MustardTiger 10y ago
    >If the price point were low enough, I could easily set up acres of this technology and map out my crops using my computer. It could keep track of when crops needed to be harvested, when I needed to weed, how much I need to plant of one thing for a season. All of that is just garden planning software, which has existed for 20+ years.
MustardTiger 10y ago
>This product has the potential to completely change the way we obtain and consume food. How? It is completely useless for farming, which is where over 99% of our food comes from. So even if it completely changed gardening, it would have almost no impact at all on the way we obtain and consume food. And all it does is plant seeds, that doesn't change gardening at all.

joshpadnick 10y ago

What a cool concept! If any members of FarmBot team are watching this thread, could you comment on why you decided to make everything open source? Clearly, it's an awesome benefit for the community, but how does it also serve FarmBot the company? I'm asking b/c I'm curious about business models that build heavily on open source.

deegles 10y ago
They could charge for support, custom designs, consulting etc or sell fully built systems or kits. There are still plenty of options.

VLM 10y ago

In my climate, I get a little extreme fighting the cold. A fairly obvious interchangeable tooling suggestion is some manner of hook or electromagnet or "whatever" to manipulate a cold frame door. Just a helpful suggestion.

coenhyde 10y ago

Awesome! I think i'll build this on my balcony! I've acually been planning something similar in my head for years. But never actually did anything about it.

carapace 10y ago

I like this but I think a crane rather than track and gantry makes more sense, eh?

betimsl 10y ago
A drone maybe? (even better no?) :-)

Jack000 10y ago

site seems to be down? I'm guessing it's this project: https://hackaday.io/project/2552-farmbot-open-source-cnc-farming https://hackaday.io/project/2552-farmbot-open-source-cnc-far...

roryaronson 10y ago
Thanks for commenting this! Yes, we just got a huge surge of traffic and our site crashed. Haha it should be up now. I'll be monitoring it. - Rory (founder at farmbot.io) (And yes, that is our entry on Hackaday!)
- roryaronson 10y ago
  Oh god. Haha too much traffic!!! Beefing up our server now...

exar0815 10y ago

Really nice concept. Especially with greenhouses, you can build large systems of it in them. But, and don't Vote me down, considering current events, how long until we see a "Weedbot"?

deleted 10y ago
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brixon 10y ago
Since it is not illegal everywhere, why would this be a problem?
joshvm 10y ago
As the author of a recently-linked post about mushroom growing pointed out, home-grown drugs have encouraged a level of experimentation and ingenuity that is rarely found among most gardeners. This is partly due to risk/reward: if you've spent $100 on seeds, you want to make damn sure they crop. People go to great lengths to figure out how to get the best yield from their weed plants, how to precisely control the growing conditions and so on. There's also a strong culture of sharing advice between growers which helps. However, probably a better solution for something like weed would be this: http://openag.media.mit.edu/ http://openag.media.mit.edu/

dustinmoorenet 10y ago

I like that the design is open-source but it is just putting seeds in the ground and watering them. That is not a complex task. I believe this http://openag.media.mit.edu/ http://openag.media.mit.edu/ is a better system for food growth.

Loughla 10y ago

I can't get your site to load, so I checked out the hackaday page. Trying not to be overly cynical here, but how is this worth the cost? It appears that it simply plants, waters, and detects/removes weeds. In a 1,250sq.ft. garden, we invest less than 2 hours per week on these tasks. How would this be scalable? How do you spell scalable? How would this justify its cost? How does it withstand being outside all year, year round? How does it not just destroy your crops when they grow tall? How could this possibly improve on current farming methods (outside of removing chemical weed-killers maybe)? I understand it's in its infancy, but I'm genuinely having a hard time with this.

brixon 10y ago
Might be cool if you can stick it on the back of a tractor and have it do these things while in motion.
- Loughla 10y ago
  Even with auto-steer technology and GPS, I can't see how it would be accurate enough to be useful over any size field. You would spend more machine/human time scanning and driving, more money in fuel, and more energy in general than if you were to just plant, spray, and irrigate.
beardicus 10y ago
> How would this be scalable? Extend the x and y axis? > How would this justify its cost? Presumably by saving costs elsewhere? Labor, chemical inputs. Not saying it's there yet though, but why should it be? > How does it withstand being outside all year, year round? A cursory glance at the specs indicates that they've considered waterproofing at least. I imagine "the elements" will prove even more challenging than expected, but it's not like this wasn't considered. > How does it not just destroy your crops when they grow tall? The y axis is up pretty tall, and the manipulator is pretty narrow to get down in between plants. Clearly it is not advisable to grow crops that are taller than will fit in the machine. > How could this possibly improve on current farming methods Automation? We don't expect Burger King robots to improve on culinary techniques. I feel this is mostly interesting for repeatable research uses, but as basic manual labor savings it's interesting as well. (I am in no way affiliated with this project... just seems easy to see the potential, and odd to treat a prototype as if it needs to make a business case right out of the gate)

nostromo 10y ago

This is cool but seems a tad over engineered. I have a garden. It uses a drip line that's buried in the ground. It's $10 worth of tubing from Lowes with a few holes where plants go. It's on a $15 timer that waters automatically once a day. I do, however, have to take a few minutes to put seeds in the ground. That said, I would be throwing money at the monitor right now if this thing was smart enough to identify weeds and remove them. (Maybe that's in the plans? They have a part for weeding shown.) But I love all these new ideas around farming. The most interesting is hydroponics considering how much more resourceful it is with water (sometimes using 90% less water per equal amount of harvest). Edit: for those asking, all I used was half inch black tubing (the kind they use for automated sprinkler systems), drilled small holes every 12 inches, buried it, hooked it up to a spigot with a timer, and that's it.

mrfusion 10y ago
How did you build that? I'd love to make something like that.
- dexterdog 10y ago
  A drip line with a timer? This is low-tech stuff that's been available for quite some time. Search for B013JPIJG4 on Amazon.
  - VLM 10y ago
    While you're shopping at amazon there are $25 class kits that come with a water filter, backflow preventer, and pressure regulator. That's what I have on my container garden. Drip emitters are the kind of thing I should be 3-d printing but at $5 for 50 or whatever the going rate is...
- adrusi 10y ago
  You just need a solenoid water valve to let the timer control the water flow. https://www.amazon.com/gp/aw/d/B00E1HXYQA/ref=mp_s_a_1_1?qid=1465333663&sr=8-1&pi=SL75_QL70&keywords=drip+hose https://www.amazon.com/gp/aw/d/B00E1HXYQA/ref=mp_s_a_1_1?qid... https://www.amazon.com/gp/aw/d/B00K0TKJCU/ref=mp_s_a_1_2?qid=1465333715&sr=8-2&pi=SL75_QL70&keywords=valve+electronic https://www.amazon.com/gp/aw/d/B00K0TKJCU/ref=mp_s_a_1_2?qid... https://www.amazon.com/gp/aw/d/B006LYHG42/ref=mp_s_a_1_1?qid=1465333779&sr=8-1&pi=SL75_QL70&keywords=electric+outdoor+timer https://www.amazon.com/gp/aw/d/B006LYHG42/ref=mp_s_a_1_1?qid...

rhgraysonii 10y ago

I've interacted with Rick a bit in the past and hes an awesome developer. Really glad to see progress continuing with this.

machbio 10y ago

Memories of Farmville - this is amazing but it wont work on the large scale, the models seem to slow to in its workflow to care for a larger area.

ElijahLynn 10y ago

Holy fucking amazing!

imaginenore 10y ago

I bet installing that thing, programming, and feeding it is at least an order of magnitude more time consuming than the actual farming by hand.

justsaysmthng 10y ago

This is pretty much how I see the future of agriculture. Give the FarmBot a bunch of wheels / robotic feet to move around and it could theoretically handle huge fields. The key thing here is the possibility to monitor each individual plant and react to changes in its development or environment (in contrast to modern industrial agriculture, were things are done with huge monster tractors). I'm sure it can/will be improved to serve more functions - like removing weeds and collecting pests without the need for herbicides or pesticides and so on. Eventually, these will all become software problems which the global programmer community will be more than glad to tackle. The most important thing about FarmBot and similar tech, though, is the potential to de-centralize agriculture again and make small-scale, local agriculture possible, without needing to employ human labor. Not only would this create a new market for high-tech agricultural tools and software and make growing your own food easy (even in the city !), it is a very welcome solution to the many environmental problems that large-scale industrial agriculture generates today. So I'm very optimistic and happy about this tech and I wish you guys all the luck.

rmason 10y ago
Sat watching that video and wondering if you could first lay down a layer of black plastic with holes punched in the right places, it would eliminate 95% of the weeding chores. http://www.amazon.com/Plastic-600ft-Embossed-Growerss-Solution/dp/B00BG9GQ0M http://www.amazon.com/Plastic-600ft-Embossed-Growerss-Soluti... Course it would help if the garden was on a slight incline with holes punched in the frame boards on one end to deal with draining off the occasional two inch rain.
- HeyLaughingBoy 10y ago
  This actually already happens. There's a farm near my house doing it. I believe it's only cost effective for high-value crops, though.
jonathankoren 10y ago
> The key thing here is the possibility to monitor each individual plant and react to changes in its development or environment (in contrast to modern industrial agriculture, were things are done with huge monster tractors). It's called precision farming, and it's done today, with "huge monster tractors". Seriously folks, modern agriculture is an advanced multibillion dollar business which left the 19th century 200 years ago.

cconcepts 10y ago

This is clever, and I applaud CNC principles being applied in such a unique way. But once the planting and prep is done (which takes a few hours max for me to do by hand) I now have a several thousand dollar watering can..... Make no mistake, this is where agriculture is heading and the people behind this are obviously clever and innovative. I just don't think this is a very compelling product (outside of the "A robot planted my veges" kudos)......yet.

hutzlibu 10y ago
You could play with it, so that it does the weeding (and snailkilling) for you ...
- cconcepts 10y ago
  Totally, which is why I added "...yet" Making dinner in the kitchen? Hit "Salad" on the app and have your farmbot harvest the ingredients for a 300g garden salad.... Lots of cool applications and I got prepared for "buying mode" when I watched the video. But three deep breaths reminded me that this wasn't going to return the value to my life that it had initially cost...yet
  - hutzlibu 10y ago
    Unfortunately yes, unless you want to play and mod with it, I also don't see it as a really usefull product, yet. But we are here on HN, right? ....

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jannyfer 10y ago

Interesting that people have a very different reaction when they see a working video and not just some ideas. Last time this was posted on Hacker News three years ago: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6451350 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6451350

gtvwill 10y ago

Holy crap is this thing for real? Sorry but this is straight up inefficiency in its finest. Honestly the amount material to produce one farm bot far out weighs the amount of produce in can produce. Like I hate monoculture farming but a 20 Ton tractor can service like 10 Thousand acres of dry area/irrigated cropping country a piece of piss, do it automated and by GPS and return Hundreds of Tons of produce. TBH if someone would just build me a robot that has 20 km range, can deal with crawling up hills and can identify coloured shapes and "pick" them (pneumatic suction would probably do it), We could put a few tens of thousand blueberry/coffee pickers out of business. FarmBot will not put anyone out of business. The Japanese Aeroponic farms have a better chance of being the future of production.

coenhyde 10y ago
You're missing the point/s. This is starting technology. Very rarely does something revolutionary start out more efficient and cost effective than the old way. Not to mention this project in its current status is aimed at hobbyists. PS I downvoted you for the negativity.

Animats 10y ago

This thing might be cost-effective if it were scaled up to round farm size. A standard center-pivot irrigator is 400 meters long. An arm that could travel along a track on the irrigator, do precision planting, and look at the plants might be useful. The amount of mechanism would be modest for the area covered.

cellularmitosis 10y ago

Using roller-skate wheels and having the gantry ride directly on top of the side-boards of the raised-bed garden would be a great way to reduce parts count here. https://youtu.be/3vgjJikt9B4?t=41s https://youtu.be/3vgjJikt9B4?t=41s

new_accnt 10y ago

Instead of using this cnc-like machine with tracks and stuff like that, wouldn't it be more cheap and simple to use a radial design like many large crop fields already use? It might remove the weed pulling feature in early iterations, but it seems much easier for just watering/nutrition.