HN Theater @HNTheaterMonth

I haven't heard of Plenty before. At first I thought they wanted to build indoor farms in cities, but I guess you could still build them someplace else (where real estate is fairly cheap) and make turnaround faster by taking advantage of indoor technology instead of using fields. [The articles mentions LocalGarden and FarmedHere, which I guess is where my impression came from.]

Is that where they hope to make their money - getting consumers to pay for fresher food? Or else, can they grow better produce indoors? Just trying to understand their value proposition.

Not long ago I was reading about a different thing called Farmbot. There's a discussion online about how much area you'd need to grow all your own food. They calculated something like 250 square meters using black beans. I was really impressed by how much space food production takes up. It's funny to think that just to survive, each of us living in a city depends on a big chunk of land somewhere else.

https://farmbot.io/2015/10/14/how-much-food-can-farmbot-grow...

⬐ jv22222

A few things make this a good value prop:

- It's much easier to grow plants inside because you don't have to worry about weird weather like frost or insects or fungus etc.

- You can claim organic status and that puts you in a higher price bracket

- You don't need to spend anywhere near as much on transportation so that saves you lots of cash

- You can have much tighter control of supply/demand dynamics (for instance ship smaller batches) because of local proximity

I'm sure there are more but those are the ones that spring to mind.

⬐ alexose

It's also possible to control a plant's life cycle, and harvest multiple times per year.

On the other hand, it's rare that the economics favor artificial light. Until energy becomes truly cheap, farms are mostly better off with the big fusion reactor in the sky.

⬐ aninhumer

Would it be practical to make a vertical farm that takes advantage of the sunlight available, and just supplements it in the obscured areas? A vertical greenhouse kind of thing?

⬐ mikekchar

The answer is "yes", to a degree. Do a google image search for "aeroponics epcot center" and you will see some in action.

⬐ sand500

One advantage I heard is the lights in these vertical farms only emit the wavelengths plants absorb while solar panels absorb across all wavelengths

⬐ ajb

They try to make solar panels absorb across as broad a spectrum as possible, but they don't absorb everything by default. It's an ongoing research goal to add spectrum without increasing cost.

⬐ joshvm

Agriculture LEDs are designed to only emit 'growing' wavelengths. But the efficiency losses in converting sunlight to electricity via solar (20% typical) and from electricity to LED light (better, but not great) don't make it any better than growing in a glasshouse.

⬐ KaiserPro

A few things that make it less good value:

- Its not new tech, its greenhouses with indoor lighting

- Its an enclosed large monoculture of plants, which means you are prone to pest and fungus. [see note]

- It has a very large electricity demand (heat and electricity)

- It is labour intensive.

[note]

growing plants in the city is difficult, mainly because the food triangle is so distorted. In central london there are loads of aphids from the lime trees, and lots of powder mildew.

Now considering these setups are aimed at green leafy rapid growth plants, you're going to be spending lots of importing ladybirds. (not much you can do about powder mildew though)

⬐ zkar

Add the tasteless flavorless variety the indoor garden produce. All those shiny indoor grown roma tomatoes imported from Canada so bland and flavorless in taste.

⬐ posterboy

I've been led to believe you'd be best served with a clean room setup of some level, clean clothes and all.

edit: anyway, within the city is a ridiculous proposal at scale, if housing is scarce already. Except for huge price differentials as from cannabis.

⬐ KaiserPro

The clean room would explain the cost. if the yield is really 500x traditional farms, that explains why its still more expensive than "organic" produce

There's a few indie projects out there now that automate veggie-patch-scale farming. They more often use a large pick-and-place type system than a small rover, though.

(Example: FarmBot https://farmbot.io/ )

The trick would be getting people to have and grow their own edible lawns. Then the cost is the same as keeping the lawns of today, but there's a more useful return. It's only a values issue. In Russia for example small gardeners produce 40% of the nations food. http://naturalhomes.org/naturalliving/russian-dacha.htm

And perhaps the evolution of tools like https://farmbot.io/ An intelligent 'lawmmower' makes your permaculture for you.

⬐ randomdata

> Then the cost is the same as keeping the lawns of today

By far, the biggest cost of my lawn is the 5 minutes per week I have to spend cutting it. How does an edible lawn compete with that?

I was looking into this a while ago, i do remember there being a farm bot being kick started(1). I was wondering about doing something like that myself, but for a hydro solution for indoors - i am about to start at a new restaurant, so that has to go on hold at the moment though :)

Note: That farmbot i linked is open sourced, so i will personally be looking more into that when i have more free time.

(1) https://farmbot.io/ (seems to be about to ship the first batch)

⬐ jelliclesfarm

thats a raised bed bot. not a farm bot.

I just saw that this system went on sale recently too: https://farmbot.io/

It would be way cool to collab and create an AutoMicroFarmBot.

What features of the AMF are you planning for the next iteration/2.0?

⬐ ph0rque

Yup, I'm in touch with Rory of FarmBot.

I would really like to solve the hassle of how heavy and inconvenient sand is, perhaps by replacing it with e.g. mushroom media: http://blog.automicrofarm.com/post/142436464771/mushroom-med.... But, first things first :)

⬐ tmoullet

Why did you decide on a two tiered system? I've seen aquaponic setups where the farmers are using a floating medium above the fish pool.

⬐ ph0rque

It's hard to find a 12" (30cm) deep medium that would allow for fruiting plants such as tomatoes, be lighter than water, and not just be a support structure such as polyurethane foam (i.e. not having roots grow through it).

⬐ justsaysmthng

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

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-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

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.

⬐ fanquake

How big do you mean when you say 'huge fields'? Attending to single plants individually, this would be far to slow to work over a huge area.

'In contrast to modern agriculture, where things are done with huge monster tractors' - You might be interested in what http://www.bluerivert.com/ are doing. They are essentially attending to every plant individually in smaller cropping areas.

Once you actually get to a large area, I.e 1000ha fields, it doesn't make sense to attend to every plant individually throughout the season. We do however have technology to plant each seed down to mm precision, and apply nutrients based on zones created within fields.

Also, does it make sense to duplicate all the infrastructure required for one of these, over every single paddock on a farm, when we could have a single, essentially autonomous, machine crop and manage the entire area itself?

⬐ King-Aaron

> How big do you mean when you say 'huge fields'? Attending to single plants individually, this would be far to slow to work over a huge area.

not really. You'd run at least one machine per planting line, so you'd be covering a lot of area at once. Plus, these could operate 24 hours a day, which is a real help along side the human workers.

⬐ HeyLaughingBoy

Don't forget energy costs...

⬐ curiousgal

>This is pretty much how I see the future of agriculture.

This is how I see it. http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2014/07/140717-japan...

⬐ banach

Minus the human.

⬐ tomp

How are you going to grow e.g. corn or bananas this way?

⬐ jonathankoren

> 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.

⬐ hutzlibu

Erm, the "precision farming" use HUGE fields of monoculture crops and pesticides.

Can't see much precision there.

With precision you could do small fields with trees and bushes (with fruits) in between and need no pesticides ... all in all, a farm could then be also a nice place just to walk around and enjoy nature. Like some bio-farms are allready today, the problem is just, that the human labour needed to do it is huge - with robots it might be possible to go all bio - and still feed everyone!

⬐ jonathankoren

It's precision because each part of the field is uniquely targeted with just exactly what it needs. This greatly mitigates over fertilization, and all the other agricultural runoff, which is not only more economical, but also more ecologically friendly.

Microfarms are unsustainable. They don't grow nearly enough food, nor the variety of foods needed (we can't live on just kale), nor do they do this economically. Basically they're cute ideas from suburbanites that have no experience beyond growing anything beyond a chia pet herb garden in a window sill. Large fields exist of a reason. And yes, GMOs and "Big Ag" is wildly successful and safe for the same reasons.

Robots don't need to solve the planting or watering problem. That's already a solved problem. The most labor intensive task is in vegetable and fruit harvesting. A two-axis vertical plotter doesn't even begin to solve that problem. It's a vision and dexterity problem. Once you solve that problem, there's no reason not to truck-mount the arms and simply scale up.

The fly-over states know a thing or two about this.

⬐ justsaysmthng

My grandparents used to harvest most of their food from the farm around their house.

Most people in that village did the same. And they survived and the food was very good - it had flavor and taste, attributes which are not applicable to produce grown in the large scale farms of today.

The only problem is that they had to work every day all day on those farms..

Large scale industrial farming made it possible for people to move to cities and forget about the difficult task of working the land.

And it was good. For a while.. But now we are faced with different problems - over populated cities, pollution, excessive carbon in the atmosphere, water shortages, etc.

Robotic farmers allow us to dream of a world in which people can grow their food locally without having to do the manual labor or rely on large-scale farming. Many could move back to the countryside - closer to nature and type away on reddit just like before, while the robots take care of their food outside in the small field.

⬐ tomp

> Robotic farmers allow us to dream of a world in which people can grow their food locally without having to do the manual labor or rely on large-scale farming. Many could move back to the countryside - closer to nature and type away on reddit just like before, while the robots take care of their food outside in the small field.

This will never happen in the form you describe. It would mean no bananas and coffee for most of the planet. It would mean no fresh vegetables in the winter. Most fruit would be highly seasonal.

There are only 2 ways of achieving this: global food sourcing, or complete climate control - which would need to be much more sophisticated than the "vertical farms" you see nowadays if you wanted to grow e.g. orange trees or banana palms.

⬐ None

None

⬐ MustardTiger

>My grandparents used to harvest most of their food from the farm around their house.

I do that. To a much greater extreme than most people: all of our dairy, meat, eggs, vegetables and most fruit comes from our yard.

>The only problem is that they had to work every day all day on those farms.

I spend about two hours a week doing it. Clearly you do not have to work all day every day to grow your own food.

>Robotic farmers allow us to dream of a world in which people can grow their food locally without having to do the manual labor or rely on large-scale farming.

So did permaculture. This is already a solved problem. The reason it is not done is cultural, not technical.

⬐ hutzlibu

But it is a unsolved problem to produce enough food, without contaminating the soil and water.

So I don't see much precision with the use of pesticides on large scale and never heard of a way to prevent them from going into the groundwater. (oh and I know a little bit about the ways how it gets decided, what chemicals get labeled as "harmless")

Oh and explain this:

> Microfarms are unsustainable. They don't grow nearly enough food

Why should lots of microfarms produce less food, than one "macrofarm" of the same size?

Doing those things on a big scale only reduces required labour -> that's why I want robots.

But it is true, that bio, if you meant that, can't produce as much per field, as a monoculture field, no matter the size - but with a monoculture, poisened field, you only get food and destroyed everything else - with a bio field, you get food and intact nature with diversity, clean water and soil ... all in all a place where you want to be. So all in all you get much more from the land if you grow Bio.

⬐ snikeris

> Why should lots of microfarms produce less food, than one "macrofarm" of the same size?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Economies_of_scale

⬐ hutzlibu

But the amount of sun shining on the same size of land is exactly the same - no matter how small you splitt it up.

⬐ snikeris

The macrofarm will be able to afford innovations before each microfarm will. Suppose a tool is developed that harvests vegetables better than existing methods. Let's say it's less likely to crush the vegetable it's picking. It's new technology so it's expensive, but if you're operating at a large enough scale, it might be worth the cost.

In this case, each microfarm will produce less vegetables than a macrofarm of the same size.

I wasn't trying to be a jerk by linking to the Wikipedia article. It seemed to me like you weren't familiar with the concept.

⬐ hutzlibu

> It seemed to me like you weren't familiar with the concept And you seem to me, like you were not familiar with the topic being discussed: output of the same amount of land, no matter the required work (because of robots)

So, nevermind ;)

⬐ HeyLaughingBoy

The problem isn't the potential output of the land; it's that the costs go up rapidly. With a very large field a traditional tractor/plow/disk/seeder/cultivator can do a lot of work in a short amount of time. If the field is now 1/100 the size, the "tractor" (robot, etc.) and its implements don't cost 1/100 as much. They may only cost 1/5 as much, so your costs are now 20x what they would otherwise have been for the proportional output.

I think that's the point he was trying to make.

⬐ mrfusion

You could also open up a lot of new farm land in rocky and mountainous areas.

⬐ bsbechtel

Yes, but production and throughput capacity, along with logistics of moving crops from the farm to a storage elevator are things that still need to be considered. Today's most advanced combines can harvest 10,000 bushels of corn per hour...you would need hundreds of robots in a field to even come close to that level of efficiency. One combine also needs about five semi-trailers driving around the clock to get all of the grain out of the field and into a storage elevator without slowing down the whole operation. Letting harvesting robots unload themselves into a truck one at a time would take weeks. There are some big changes that would need to take place to achieve what you are talking about.

⬐ hutzlibu

> There are some big changes that would need to take place to achieve what you are talking about.

No doubt about that. And I am not so naive to believe they will happen soon on a big scale ... but I hope to live long enough to see them come (while having my part in it)

⬐ neuromancer2701

Most of the grain and corn is used to feed livestock. So if you just turned those corn/grain fields into grazing land you wouldn't need the combine(as cool as it is.)

⬐ tomp

Are you're sure you'd get the same energy per land output with grass as with corn?

⬐ green7ea

I think a big reason for using corn are the very generous corn growing subsidies. I'm not sure it's more efficient technically.

⬐ MustardTiger

No, corn and beans are far more energy dense than grasses. You need way more grazing land than you do crop land to create the same amount of beef.

⬐ brianobush

think decentralized. you don't need to produce that amount of corn in one area. if you have 10k households, you could produce the same level of food without the same environmental impact and less costs (subsidies aren't free) while having better food quality and diversity.

⬐ chongli

Just use a thousand quadcopter drones, each one capable of harvesting a single ear of corn at a time and dropping it off on the elevator. It'd operate like a swarm of giant bees! :)

⬐ HeyLaughingBoy

And this is somehow better/cheaper/more efficient than a single large tractor?

⬐ gtvwill

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

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.

⬐ Loughla

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.

⬐ CuriouslyC

I completely agree with you in its current incarnation. There is no way this is even within an order of magnitude of the price/performance ratio of a migrant farm worker (who are career farmers and much faster than you or I).

However, I suspect a device like this will scale well cost wise with longer rails, thus larger versions working in a elongated greenhouse would probably significant efficiency. Additionally, you will need a device like this if you want to do vertical hydroponic farming, as the efficiency of people drops precipitously as soon as they can no longer easily reach the plants they're working with.

⬐ Loughla

Having worked in a greenhouse, much of the planting is automated in large-scale shops already through vacuum planters. Watering is similarly automated through irrigation systems.

Now, vertical hydroponics, that's one I hadn't considered. That may be a good point. I lack any experience with those systems, though, so I hesitate to comment.

⬐ brixon

Might be cool if you can stick it on the back of a tractor and have it do these things while in motion.

⬐ Loughla

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

> 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)

⬐ sgnelson

extending the x and y axis is not a solution. Complexity and costs will go up non-linearly with such a solution. A better solution would probably involve wheels... Then they could call it a "tractor." (but seriously, that'd be a better solution than a 100 meter (or even 3 meter) x/y axis.

⬐ codedokode

I think better idea would be four tall legs (like a table legs) so it can move around the field. It doesn't need to move fast. You also need something to detect its position (laser beacons? radio beacons?) and some place to hide from rain. And a hand with a camera for harvesting crops into a basket.

⬐ Loughla

I'm genuinely not trying to treat it as if it's a business right away. It's just, I don't know, maybe I'm too close to farming to get my head out of it.

I'm a 4th generation farmer in my spare time. The variables required in agriculture are just too many for something like this, is my opinion. I get it, farming isn't immune from technology, but this just seems like over-engineering a problem.

⬐ beardicus

> The variables required in agriculture are just too many for something like this, is my opinion.

I'm certain there is a lot of complex knowledge locked up in farmers' brains that most folks wouldn't even think of. The same is true for doctors though, and it doesn't seem foolish that folks are creating expert systems to help with complicated diagnostics and such. Surely the wisdom of farmers can be codified and emulated reasonably well by software.

Further, maybe this is only limited to a subset of agriculture. It doesn't need to apply to every crop type to be useful. It's probably dumb to grow 100 acres of wheat this way. Perhaps it's useful for highly-controlled small beds of high-value high-labor-input vegetables or such?

⬐ daveguy

I would love to see a shared open database of environment and care parameters. Imagine all of the ounces of water per week per watt of sunlight type optimizations. Identifying okra that is ready to pick would be nice -- the maximum size for tenderness and plant health. A shared open db of farming parameters would be awesome.

⬐ dustinmoorenet

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/ is a better system for food growth.

⬐ cconcepts

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

You could play with it, so that it does the weeding (and snailkilling) for you ...

⬐ cconcepts

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

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? ....

⬐ Animats

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.

⬐ Jack000

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

⬐ roryaronson

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

Oh god. Haha too much traffic!!! Beefing up our server now...

⬐ imaginenore

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.

⬐ joshpadnick

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

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

⬐ cellularmitosis

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

⬐ carapace

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

⬐ betimsl

A drone maybe? (even better no?) :-)

⬐ exar0815

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"?

⬐ brixon

Since it is not illegal everywhere, why would this be a problem?

⬐ None

None

⬐ joshvm

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/

⬐ ccallebs

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.

⬐ djrogers

> 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

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.

⬐ MustardTiger

>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.

⬐ VLM

"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

>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.

⬐ Loughla

>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

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

>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

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

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

> 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.

⬐ MustardTiger

>Everything is easy once you learn how to do it.

Which you still have to do. Again, this literally does nothing but plant seeds for you, which is a pretty easy job.

>I'm curious which of the things I listed aren't significant issues?

All of them. The only harmful interaction between plants anyone is going to experience in their garden is beans and peas getting slowed by onions. And that doesn't even matter much, it just takes a little longer for your beans to be ready to harvest. Acidity is largely irrelevant, some plants tolerate or even prefer acidic soil, but almost all plants grown in a vegetable garden do just fine with neutral to slightly acidic soil. And watering is a non-issue, use hugels or at least ghetto it up with "lasagna" beds.

>but the maker community will surely expand upon the platform.

To do what? Solve problems that are already solved and do not require any sort of mechanical solution?

⬐ dbcurtis

> 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

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.

⬐ None

None

⬐ new_accnt

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.

⬐ jannyfer

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

⬐ IvanK_net

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.

⬐ coenhyde

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.

⬐ machbio

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.

⬐ rhgraysonii

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

⬐ VLM

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.

⬐ ElijahLynn

Holy fucking amazing!

⬐ nostromo

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.

⬐ erkkie

Even more interesting (to me) is aquaponics, hydroponics + fish for the nitrogen cycle: http://www.backyardaquaponics.com/information/the-nitrogen-c...

⬐ lennelpennel

I do this at home, hybrid my own urine and some fish. No weeds make it into my grow bed and the yield is high. I even use this water to water my other plants because of its high nutrient content. I power it all of an arduino.

⬐ white-flame

I just use adjustable drippers on an extremely low setting, and leave the water spigot on 24/7. One drip per second is approximately one gallon per day, so you can estimate how much water you're dispensing.

Most timers are either battery-operated, or have to be wound once a day. To me, that sucks, and I don't want to have to route power to the garden system. With the slow drippers, I can leave this for weeks without issue.

⬐ MustardTiger

>That said, I would be throwing money at the monitor right now if this thing was smart enough to identify weeds and remove them.

Weeding is entirely unnecessary and often does more harm than good. Plant a cover crop and leave it be. Gardening can already be as simple as 3 tasks: plant, harvest, spread compost. It is just that people are very set in their ways and don't ever think to explore better ways of doing things.

⬐ hutzlibu

Have you done that, or just read about it?

Because I read about it (I asume you mean permaculture), tried it out - and dismissed most of it.

Permaculture is indeed great as a concept, but is in no way as easy as people tell you it is. Most of what people tell you about is close to scam (even if it is wishfull thinking)

⬐ gtvwill

Mate permacultures easy, like....incredibly easy, if you read into old billy mollisons book and couldn't manage to make it work you probably just over thought the process, and it does make for land that has GREAT production per acre rates.

⬐ hutzlibu

Well, I've seen quite some places doing permaculture in australia and europe - and they all had to do LOTS of work - and a not so great production per acre rate (but it all looked great on the other hand)

And I do use permaculture principles in my garden, but if someone tells me, no weeding is ever needed - then they either do gardening on a different planet, or are just lying.

⬐ MustardTiger

Yes, I do it every year to grow thousands of dollars of food for the small CSA I operate. I spend more time taking money and handing people baskets than I do working in the gardens and greenhouse. What did you have trouble with exactly?

⬐ spoon16

Any good books that describe the process you use?

⬐ MustardTiger

I honestly don't know, all my info has come from the internet. I use a pond, hugels and cover crop to skip watering. I don't till because tilling is simply harmful, you don't need to do anything to skip that. I use a cover crop of white clover and bugleweed to keep the soil from eroding away, keep the soil full of roots and thus bacteria, and to keep the moisture in the soil instead of having it evaporate off. Bare earth is really terrible, but everyone has learned through osmosis that gardens are supposed to look bare. In the fall after harvesting I spread the composted manure from the goats, rabbits and chickens on the garden beds. That's pretty much it. The biggest difficulty in gardening is planning (how much to plant of which things at what times), not actual work.

⬐ hutzlibu

Well, with Weeds? (and snails)

Are you telling me, that you don't have to do weeding, like OP said, at all?

So not in the protected greenhouse, but out in the open gardens, where there are seeds coming from everywhere?

⬐ MustardTiger

>Well, with Weeds?

What about them? A weed is simply an unwanted plant. If they do no harm, why do you want to spend time removing them? Again, plant a good cover crop and don't weed. Your soil will be better, you will use less water, and there's no downside.

>(and snails)

Nothing about permaculture says you can't deal with snails. You can still deal with snails/slugs however you like. The obvious being simple copper wire or beer traps.

>Are you telling me, that you don't have to do weeding, like OP said, at all?

Correct. The only plants I pull out of the ground are root vegetables.

>So not in the protected greenhouse, but out in the open gardens, where there are seeds coming from everywhere?

Yes. Again, seeds coming from everywhere doesn't matter, because a dandelion in your potatoes doesn't hurt anything.

⬐ treehau5

Was at a vineyard in Napa a couple weeks ago and they had a very diverse garden on display. One of the signs pointed out the type of weeds that grew there but referred to them as "volunteer plants" I got a kick out of that.

⬐ HeyLaughingBoy

If they do no harm, why do you want to spend time removing them?

I agree wholeheartedly. If. Unfortunately, if I ignore the thistles and many of the other unwanted plants, they will outcompete the plants I do want and completely overwhelm them. I'm not a big fan of doing unnecessary work. I know from experience that if I don't weed, I get almost zero yield. Squashes and potatoes are the only plants I have that survived.

OTOH, a few minutes here and there spent weeding (get them while they're small) and I get more veggies than I can eat.

This year I'm experimenting with using discarded heavy plastic bags as mulch to suppress the weeds. I'll see how that goes.

⬐ green7ea

If it's a possibility, you may want to look into ducks for your snail problem. The ducks will keep the snail population low enough that it won't be a problem.

⬐ hutzlibu

Well, I also heard storys from people where the ducks ate the salad and not the snails ... but also more successfull ones.

But unfortunately ducks are not an option, even though I also would love their eggs.

⬐ Loughla

Ducks will also drill you nice little holes after they've eaten your green plants, so anyone who says just get ducks isn't telling the entire truth. Same with chickens. Same with guineas. Same with turkeys. Same with geese.

They'll always eat part of your harvest.

Side-note, duck eggs are great for baked goods. Nice, fluffy cakes and brownies. But fried they're a little gross.

⬐ zardo

Then you get snakes to control the ducks.

⬐ MustardTiger

You can't generalize "ducks". Different breeds behave very differently. The problem is someone saying "get ducks", rather than "get runners", so someone goes and gets whatever random ducks they find and of course they eat the garden. Or getting ducks and not having a pond even!

⬐ zardo

Not all weeds are problematic, dandelions draw water up from deeper in the soil than most plants reach, and they are edible.

The dirt will get covered in plants, but you don't have to pull up everything you didn't plant yourself.

⬐ stellar678

Sheet mulching is easy and incredibly effective in my experience. Cardboard topped with a mulch layer like straw. (Optional soil amendments below the cardboard.)

In a small backyard garden you might need to pull out a couple dozen weeds over the entire growing season.

You'll also be able to reduce your water use significantly because you've eliminated most of the open/broken soil that loses water to evaporation.

⬐ prawn

I mulch. I still get insane amounts of weeds and they are usually far more aggressive and larger than the crop I'm trying to grow. I think it depends on the quality of your soil and weeds in the area (existing, from neighbours, etc).

⬐ stellar678

Interesting. Are the weeds penetrating through a barrier like cardboard - or just through a mulch layer? I've worked on some larger-scale permaculture projects where a cardboard/mulch combo managed to kill off a thick blanket of ivy, and that stuff is tenacious.

⬐ prawn

Through a layer of lucerne. Mixture of inheriting poor soil quality, seeds drifting in and passages where it's been let go (while overseas, etc) and weeds have developed seed heads.

Thistles are a real pain here (South Australia), as are soursobs (oxalis). I have an entire catalogue of weeds.

I might try some black plastic on one bed.

⬐ HeyLaughingBoy

I agree. As soon as I read the first comment about weeding being unnecessary, I realized that person wasn't dealing with thistles. I am in an ongoing war with those things. Even after covering up a section of garden for two years with opaque plastic sheet and heavy junk, a week after removing it, up they come.

My soil is very good quality, having been improved with chicken & horse manure and composted chicken litter. The problem is I live on a windy hilltop and seeds from all over land where I'm planting. I've even had a wheat stalk show up.

⬐ prawn

One key to solarisation is to not turn over the soil after cooking the top layer. If you turn the soil, you bring dormant seeds to the surface where they can once again ruin your life.

If you did that properly and still got thistles, then we're doomed!

One thing to try might be two layers of clear plastic with air trapped between - maybe 15-20cm gap. That further raises the temperature of the soil underneath. It's a method used in greenhouses too.

⬐ throwaway1979

Completely agreed. When I tried my hand at gardening, weeding was the hardest part .. we ended up neglecting our garden for a few weeks and the weeds pretty much took over. And this is despite having laid down a layer of black plastic and mulch.

⬐ tonylemesmer

For some its over engineered. But for time poor people who want to grow their own food in the back yard it seems perfect. By virtue of the fact that it can manipulate the plants by robot you can keep track of many metrics automatically via the remote user interface. Where the plants are, when they were planted. Staggered planting. IT could bring relatively advanced techniques to complete newbies.

Plus its scalable - just extend the raised bed if you have space and it allows manual intervention because it can be moved out of the way easily.

For watering yes I agree its complete overkill.

⬐ mrfusion

How did you build that? I'd love to make something like that.

⬐ dexterdog

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

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

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...

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...

⬐ awqrre

Doesn't this solenoid need 12V?

⬐ mdorazio

Yes (actually they say it works as low as 6V). You could, however, power it off a solar panel + battery enclosure so it's mostly set and forget.

⬐ prawn

I agree. For me, planting seeds is easy and watering is straightforward (driplines on a timer). It's the weeding (despite mulching) and pest control that is ongoing, time consuming and difficult to automate.

If I don't dust tomatoes or cover broccoli/etc I will lose almost everything.

Something that skimmed/raked the surface lightly at regular intervals between rows to frustrate slugs and disrupt weeds would probably help me, but not sure how it could reliably account for varying plant types, sagging leaves, wayward tomato vines, etc.

⬐ treehau5

Hi, I am learning more about farming, can you explain why you have to dust tomatoes or cover the broccoli?

Also, I seem to have a pest problem as well, I think rabbits, as all the leaves on my bean stalks have seemingly been chewed off.

⬐ prawn

Garden stores usually sell dust for tomatoes. It discourages burrowing grubs from getting into them.

Broccoli leaves get decimated by caterpillars if they aren't protected from moths laying eggs on them. Same happens to cabbages, bok choy, etc. A fine net with 10mm gaps works fairly well. I use petal poles and arches of pipe to make a removable frame.

Looks a bit like this: http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_OJlKX8cCges/SoKz6rQJ3bI/AAAAAAAABx...

For slugs/snails, I use pellets but apparently you can use copper tape if you have raised garden beds.

⬐ tiplus

Yes, I agree (in part). This stuff makes a lot more sense when you add climate / light control. Some plants are very difficult to cultivate, coffee for example (it needs constant temperature and will drop all leaves if you leave the window open on a frosty day). Others, like tomatoes, are difficult/impossible to get right if your garden is too shady (personal experience).

The energy costs for indoor climate / light regulation can quickly become outrageous compared to super market veggie prices. Therefore, I think this type of tech is for rare exotic plant, maybe historical even.

Imagine buying a piece of tech for growing historical coffee plants in your basement where you set the climate control to Kenia or Hawaii (buy the soil addon?) and which guarantees (as in `likely it will yield') you 2kg of your own personal coffee harvest per plant. This stuff has urban hipster $$$ written all over it.

⬐ patrickk

> Imagine buying a piece of tech for growing historical coffee plants in your basement where you set the climate control to Kenia or Hawaii (buy the soil addon?) and which guarantees (as in `likely it will yield') you 2kg of your own personal coffee harvest per plant. This stuff has urban hipster $$$ written all over it.

If you could control climate and soil to that degree, I can think of a certain plant that you could grow that will yield much more profit than a coffee plant: http://botanycentral.providence.wikispaces.net/file/view/coc...

⬐ DKnoll

The amount of coca needed would be far more than can fit in a basement.

⬐ j_s

Yes, these discussions of alternative farming options always wind up being about growing drugs:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11845573

Agreed that AWGs, especially vapor-compression systems, aren't exactly mind blowing technology, but I'm excited for this for a different reason:

I really like the idea of having open source infrastructure. I would like to see people build open source electric vehicles, farming robots, membrane bioreactors, etc. For the naysayers, at least two of these are already a thing: https://www.osvehicle.com/ https://farmbot.io/

Let's see how far these things get. Open source software has come a long way but there's a whole host of challenges with open source hardware projects which we haven't solved yet (open source toolchains for designing said hardware, open standards for modularity, collaboration tools, etc.). The only way we're going to overcome these challenges [and discover the ones we don't know about yet] is to try it.

To that end, I'm glad that this project IS relatively simple -- I think that increases its chances for success, especially considering that this is uncharted territory for most of the team members.

Moreover, there does seem to be a market for these things: http://www.grandviewresearch.com/industry-analysis/global-at... and I would expect that the cost of energy should eventually go down as we develop less naive means for generating energy.

I'm all for it. Work that dehumidifier.

TL;DR The meta problem of open source hardware is interesting in and of itself.