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I've built robots. I've built greenhouses. I like software and the occasional bit of farming. Thirs looks cute and fun, and I hope they iterate, but it's not re
by kortex 5y ago
I've built robots. I've built greenhouses. I like software and the occasional bit of farming. Thirs looks cute and fun, and I hope they iterate, but it's not really solving the right problems, and introduces its own.
1 - there are no straight lines on a farm. Maybe in a hydro setup built on concrete slab, in which case, why robot?
2 - needs a way to cover more ground. If it's not able to travel linearly indefinitely in one direction along a bed, there's no way to scale.
3 - grit. Precision CnC mechanisms and dirt do not mix. You can't keep farm things clean (unless hydro, and even then, things get wet and caked with fertilizer salt)
Ditch the linear ways for something like bike tires. There's an open source solar farm robot which rolls around weeding (can't find at the moment, maybe was a video). Not limited by a box. They need robust mechanisms which can stand up to farm abuse and are easy to service, grease, and replace (unless you hermetically seal the components, which is harder than it sounds).
Weeds are actually pretty easy to manage.
If someone wants to make an impact in the farm tech space, come up with a cheaper alternative for scooping and dumping dirt. A ride-on tractor can be had used for $500-800. But as soon as you start talking loaders, it's $2-3000 used, and tens of thousands for new. Also the smallest tend to be a 4 foot wide bucket and a few hundred pounds lift. I want something half or a quarter of that. Able to scoop 50 lbs of dirt, repeatedly, and dig holes/trenches. That would have a massive impact in agrarian communities around the world.
- bobiny 5y agoThis is a for small hipster raised bed farming in back yard. Maybe it doesn't have to scale to a size of a commercial farm
- mikepurvis 5y agoAs a fellow backyard raised bed hipster, part of the point for me is going out and tending it. I struggle to see the value in this unless it’s about scaling.
- lifty 5y agoYou will tend the robot instead.
- schmorptron 5y agoAh, the Minecraft Modpack methodology.
- kortex 5y agoWhen you start off playing Stardew Valley but end up playing Factorio/Satisfactory.
- MayeulC 5y agoOne personal (and open source) favourite of mine is Mindustry. I also heard of shapez.io.
- bobiny 5y agoI get automatic watering, especially in arid climates, but planting and weed plucking is excessive imo.
- ProZsolt 5y agoBut automatic watering is a solved problem. You can set up an automatic drip irrigation system very cheaply.
- mikepurvis 5y agoFor a small bed like the one in the demonstration, surely that's more simply managed with a drip hose and maybe a timer? Drip hoses are also better from a water consumption point of view since it goes straight to the soil— you don't lose any to runoff or evaporation.
- bluGill 5y agoLarge farms put the hoses in the ground - the water never touches the air (well I assume some will seep to the surface, but not much), instead it is applied only close to the roots. You need to be very careful to apply your seeds just above the hose, but this is a solved problem: modern farming can place each seed to within 2cm of where intended over large fields even when the tractor is planting 50 rows at a time at 20km/h.
- blacktriangle 5y agoFor me, playing with tech is part of the reason I have a backyard farm. So far I've just played with very basic things like sunken hose irrigation with timers hooked up to a rain gauge so it only waters when there's no rain, but I'd love to have the time to look more into the robotics side of things. For those of us who sling CRUD sites all day long, the opportunity to dig into more machine/computer interaction is just fun.
- mikepurvis 5y agoFair enough! I work at a robotics company, and I already feel guilt for not putting more effort into my existing homeassistant and networking setup. But if you were wanting to scratch an itch, I could definitely picture this being rewarding.
- jvanderbot 5y agoAs a tech-crazed wanna-be hipster gardener, the value is pretending to do it "better" than the backyard raised bed hipsters. Observe: "Using the manual controls, you can move FarmBot and operate its tools and peripherals in real-time. Scare birds away while at work, take photos of your veggies, turn the lights on for a night time harvest, or simply impress your friends and neighbors with a quick demo."
- bobiny 5y agoMaybe you wouldn't get a garden otherwise if you've got no skill, no experience living on a farm. This way you get to have a garden without know how to do it and without a choir part like watering regularly. Now you can water whenever you feel like it.
- spelunker 5y agoSame - I enjoy working in my garden because it's a break from my office tech job! Robot aside, the UI to plan your planting is pretty great though.
- TaylorAlexander 5y agoI’m working on a different farming robot. Since my office is at the farm and half of my work is doing something outside with the machine, it’s a pretty idyllic setting for a job!
- clifdweller 5y agoI thought the same thing. I could care less about the robot but a good garden planning app would be nice and let you track when you water, plant, harvest/ yield of crop from year to year
- daddylongstroke 5y agoAn app can't tell you that. You need to get out and observe every day. That's the fun of growing plants and raising animals.
- mkr-hn 5y agoSome day I hope everyone has a backyard farm to supply at least some of their food. Some of those people will need assistance to do it.
- bobiny 5y agoCommunity gardens.
- TaylorAlexander 5y agoThis! I started bookmarking community gardens in Oakland. There’s quite a few and I hope more space can be allocated for them in the future!
- bobiny 5y agoMy dream is to make gardens under geodesic domes. In UK there is Eden project with 2 domes: one has mediterranean climate and another tropical. Imagine being able to grow mangoes and pineapples almost anywhere (it maybe too expensive in some climates, but maybe just growing strawberries there would be nice). https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MWr67v620kY https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MWr67v620kY
- mikepurvis 5y agoI'd love to figure out how to do this in such a way that some or all of the warmth for them could come from waste-heat sources. Seems like such a waste to build a dome for growing local food and then have to heat it through the night with conventional fuels.
- ratsforhorses 5y agoOn a side note, check out forest gardening, namely "Plants for a future" is an excellent reference/book pfaf.orgyou, the author whom I had the luck to meet had a "huge" garden nearby in Cornwall
- daddylongstroke 5y ago
- kortex 5y agoThat's exactly what I have and I'm telling you, it's still impractical. One, my greenhouse is a 24x13' footprint (which is pretty much the minimum useable with for a walk-in), with 3 bed rows 16' long, 2 or 4' wide. So I'd need 3 robot setups. Beds are long and skinny to facilitate human ergonomics. The shown examples are way too wide for raised beds, unless they are the walk-on type. So I'd still benefit from a robot which could straddle the bed and be easy to move from one bed to another.
- bobiny 5y agoMaybe you need 1 robot with wide legs?
- maxioatic 5y agoIt's open source and designed to be modular/expandable. What's stopping you from building one to fit your needs? Here's some pictures[0] of people building larger scale ones: - 10x20' inside a greenhouse - 1.5x18m outdoor [0] - https://forum.farmbot.org/t/photo-contest-post-your-best-farmbot-photo-from-2020/7059/4 https://forum.farmbot.org/t/photo-contest-post-your-best-far...
- commandlinefan 5y ago> small hipster raised bed farming in back yard As a small hipster raised bed farmer (or rather, gardener), I actually looked into this at one point - the $1500 price tag put me off of it really quick. There's no way that kind of investment makes sense unless you're planning to sell the vegetables to recoup your investment - and it's doubtful that the machine will realistically last more than five years or so, so you'll have to replace it at some point in the fairly near future.
- bobiny 5y agoI think you pay to get hands off garden.
- commandlinefan 5y agoIn that case, you're better off just buying your produce at the grocery store.
- bobiny 5y agoBut you can watch it grow.
- toofy 5y agoi mean, how many hobbies can you say that about? most of them i imagine. hobbies are about tinkering and learning. we usually put far more in financially then we get returned financially. hobbies are expensive.
- bobiny 5y agoLike home made beer. Unless stuff at the store is really bad and/or super expensive. But in terms of gardening I'd bet on hydroponics.
- toofy 5y agoi don’t think this is an investment kind of project. it’s a hobby, more for people who enjoy the tinkering as much as some people enjoy playing in their own gardens which often costs far more than they’re getting in return via food. simply an early open source iteration with hopes for community improvements as more people with varying needs begin to contribute. this seems like its definitely not a project yet for people who don’t enjoy that as a hobby.
- qq4 5y agoSlightly off topic, but what is it about raised beds? Why not till and fertilize the soil you already have?
- lwb 5y agoTexas checking in -- the dirt in my backyard is full of clay and totally unsuitable for growing anything other than grass and weeds. Many places are like this.
- qq4 5y agoThat makes sense, and maybe I'm sweeping aside many places similar without thinking about them. In the Midwest I've always had good luck in the ground.
- f-securus 5y agoThe back loves raised beds compared to the alternative.
- afrodc_ 5y agoFinally got a home and am finding the same thing here in central Texas. At least with the crap soil the builders use to form the land around the foundation. My plan is to attempt to grow more deep rooted plants so their roots can break up the soil and die off when I trim them. Then aeration and topsoil composting. Still a work in progress so I have no idea if it'll work.
- elmolino89 5y agoThe clay soil usually has a low organic matter content. So bringing mulch, grass clippings etc. does improve several key factors for the plants to thrive. The problem with putting a layer of rotting grass/weeds on the top is that at least in some locations it will make a perfect slug/snail farm. So I prefer to burry it in shallow pits/trenches. Also probably any preferably dense plant cover protects the top layer from being backed by the sun and becoming brick-like.
- nickspacek 5y agoI always thought these folks might be onto something, though I'm not sure how successful the approach has been: https://www.opensourceecology.org/ https://www.opensourceecology.org/
- bobiny 5y agoI follow them for some time, they seem to be doing something, but I don't understand their grand vision.
- kortex 5y agoI've been following them (for quite some time actually) and I admire their vision, but from what I've observed, they have run out of steam in the past few years. Also their approach is great if you have a metal shop and lots of raw materials and components ready to go, but for their goal of helping mechanized developing countries, I think it falls flat. The first rule of pricing hardware is economy of scale wins. Being able to fabricobble a farm tractor from a Toyota pickup is way more valuable than building one from scratch using steel box beams. I think their approach would be better served by creating an "API standard" for mechanical interfaces, like an ISO standard of sorts, so you could fabricobble your prime mover, your bucket loader, your hydraulics, from whatever you happen to have, and be able to swap out with anyone else's peripheral. Like the IDDS, but more down to Earth :) : https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_Docking_System_Standard https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_Docking_System_S...
- jedimastert 5y agoI think this is geared at personal, specifically small-scale backyard farms.
- manimm 5y agohttps://youtu.be/3mrvd0B6DuQ https://youtu.be/3mrvd0B6DuQ ?
- nobody_nowhere 5y agoRe the weeding robot -- you may be thinking of https://tertill.com https://tertill.com iRobot founders' new thing. Small, and undercapitalized, but promising.
- kortex 5y agoNeat, and promising, though not the one I was thinking of. I think it might have been this one, Acorn by Twisted Fields: https://community.twistedfields.com/t/introducing-acorn-a-precision-farming-rover-from-twisted-fields/17 https://community.twistedfields.com/t/introducing-acorn-a-pr... https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NsyEIgKVM5E https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NsyEIgKVM5E
- nobody_nowhere 5y agoVery cool, thanks for sharing!
- TaylorAlexander 5y agoHey that’s my robot, thank you for sharing it! I just published a new article to go with our latest video. This one takes a closer look at the vehicle subsystems. https://community.twistedfields.com/t/a-closer-look-at-acorn-our-open-source-precision-farming-rover/108 https://community.twistedfields.com/t/a-closer-look-at-acorn... Edit: just submitted it as an article on HN if anyone wants to give it their vote: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27634450 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27634450
- jvanderbot 5y agoTertill is cool and all, but for a new garden, you still have to weed until the payplants are big enough to trigger "collisions". There's no magic in sensing: It just kills new growth.
- spelunker 5y agoIt also looks like you need to give it room to move around? Look at all that space that could be used for more veggies!
- tony0x02 5y agoAnd probably in mining too
- justsomeperson 5y agoHow about something like this: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spidercam https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spidercam Where it can be suspended above the field and moved to any point above the plant and can be raised as crops grow?
- kortex 5y agoNot the worst idea, though IIRC that style of robot needs a fair amount of tension in the wires in order to minimize droop.
- randomdata 5y ago> there are no straight lines on a farm. The simple AB line served the agricultural guidance industry (think GPS) for many years before systems capable of handling complex curves arrived on the market.
- waynesonfire 5y agoagree completely. if it's for personal farming--it's too expensive because tending to a handful of plants is trivial.
- 34679 5y ago>I want something half or a quarter of that. Able to scoop 50 lbs of dirt, repeatedly, and dig holes/trenches. https://www.toro.com/en/professional-contractor/compact-utility-loaders/dingo-220 https://www.toro.com/en/professional-contractor/compact-util...
- TaylorAlexander 5y agoI’m designing an open source farming robot (Acorn by Twisted Fields) and I’m looking at doing Charles Dowding’s no-dig farming method. Instead of tillage they drop more compost on top of the beds each season. In that case it would be super helpful for our robot to be able to scoop from a pile of compost and distribute it over the beds. You think there’s a lot of value in that? I’m still mulling it over. Here’s a nice overview of a no-dig farm: https://youtu.be/u79tiVcj8bY https://youtu.be/u79tiVcj8bY
- 34679 5y agoYes. There are plenty of things that need to be spread on farms. I have a friend who made huge piles of bio-char for spreading in his hops field. Hops fields are full of poles supporting the trellis that supports the plants, so there's a lot to dodge. Doing it with the tractor bucket required a lot of manual touch up after. Also, in landscaping and construction, the ability to move soil, mulch, and gravel autonomously would be extremely helpful. Spreading it evenly would be icing on the cake.
- snypher 5y agoThis is $6-8k used and probably out of scope.
- 34679 5y agoAll of his numbers are way low, though. Good luck finding a running tractor for $500-$800, and used loaders are $10-$15k, not $2-$3k. $2k will get you a new set of loader tires.
- weatherlight 5y agoYour argument is a strawman, this obviously isn't for commercial farming. This is for personal use for people who have a 120 sqft+ in their backyard.....
- KirillPanov 5y agoWhich is why this product is named "gardenbot"?
- weatherlight 5y agoif read the home page: "At home Grow food for yourself, your family, and your community by installing FarmBot on a raised bed, urban rooftop, or in a small greenhouse at home. Fully automated, hyper-local food production has never been so attainable." This is the antithesis of commercial farming.
- hinkley 5y agoThere's a weird sort of reverse classism I saw in my relatives going up. You might summarize it as 'people without dirt under their nails don't understand shit'. As someone who went through endurance sports, being the fix-it guy, and a CS program I always sort of had one foot in both worlds and didn't really engage in this kind of rhetoric. But as I've been accumulating more woodworking tools and getting a lot of dirt under my nails building a giant garden, I'm starting to see their point. This device is going to gum up, being exposed to UV all day, dust, wind, and rain. The tolerances on this device are way tighter than any in situ environment is going to allow. And you're going to kneel on that track and it's gonna hurt like a motherfucker. This will be like a pet turtle you have to keep flipping right side up, not like a roomba.
- dnautics 5y ago> This device is going to gum up You say that like this device hasn't been around for years, accumulating revisions, upgrades, and user stories.
- hinkley 5y agoLook at the videos. That’s an outdoor laboratory environment.
- jve 5y agoDirectly from article: "And because everything is made from aluminum, stainless steel, and UV resistant ABS, FarmBot will last for years in outdoor environments."
- hinkley 5y agoAluminum needs to be replaced when damaged. It won’t rust at least, but that’s only if you don’t let it touch any chemicals or other metals. And you can’t make a robot only out of aluminum, steel, and ABS plastic. Cmon, you know better than that. All it takes is failure of one of the parts they conveniently did not mention and you have an expensive doorstop. There are untold number of videos out there that complain about lack of sufficient grommets and conduits for vehicle trailers, resulting in predictable shorts circuits. You’d like to think these are all solved problems, but they aren’t staying solved.
- skrebbel 5y ago> 1 - there are no straight lines on a farm. I'm not sure what you mean, to me this sounds like "everybody knows that birds can't fly". But I might just be totally misunderstanding you. Do you mean "there are no straight lines on farms near where I live"? Cause, well, half my relatives are farmers and their farms are very much made up of straight lines. For context, here's a google image search for Dutch potato fields: https://www.google.com/search?q=aardappelveld&source=lnms&tbm=isch https://www.google.com/search?q=aardappelveld&source=lnms&tb...
- lelandbatey 5y agoThose rows are "straight" in a way that looks roughly right from up high, or from head height, but you can see the exact problem they're talking about in several of those pictures you linked; farms are "straight" to a few centimeters over a few tens of meters, but they're not "straight" down to sub-single centimeter deviation over 30 meters. And while it may be possible to have _some_ farms operate that way, how does this system interact with places where that won't work? What about places like the Palouse region of Washington, where you'll see farms stretching for tens of kilometers, but they have to do so over rolling hills[1]? Large, flat, level areas aren't that common, while major-to-minor deviations from flat-and-level are very common. The grandparent comment is I believe rightly asking "how does this 'farm bot' solve the problems of real farms?" I agree, this looks less like a farm-bot and more like a "serious gardener bot", which is a different niche. [1] - https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Palouse_hills_northeast_of_Walla_Walla.jpg https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Palouse_hills_northe...