
Build a Personal Food Computer - Trisell
http://openag.media.mit.edu/build/
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Animats
Farmers would call this a "greenhouse". Here's one commercial greenhouse
control system.[1] There are lots of greenhouse control systems. The fancier
ones control water, fertilizer, temperature, humidity, oxygen content, CO2
content, lighting, etc. Some vegetables, such as lettuce, can be overclocked,
with a short day/night cycle.

This stuff isn't new, although the controllers are getting smaller.

[1] [http://www.climatecontrol.com/](http://www.climatecontrol.com/)

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zzzeek
Are any of them built on open source software and open hardware ? I think
that's part of the big idea here.

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jmspring
One could, eschew software, and handle the requirements and growing manually.
It's actually pretty rewarding when you have the time and space.

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derrickdirge
This strikes me as a non sequitur. If I wanted to eschew software, I wouldn't
be reading about building a "personal food computer."

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swsieber
From another page about the project:

The Food Computer is a controlled-environment agriculture technology platform
that uses robotic systems to control and monitor climate, energy, and plant
growth inside of a specialized growing chamber. Climate variables such as
carbon dioxide, air temperature, humidity, dissolved oxygen, potential
hydrogen, electrical conductivity, and root-zone temperature are among the
many conditions that can be controlled and monitored within the growing
chamber. Operational energy, water, and mineral consumption are monitored (and
adjusted) through electrical meters, flow sensors, and controllable chemical
dosers throughout the growth period.

Each specific set of conditions can be thought of as a climate recipe, and
each recipe produces unique results in the phenotypes of the plants. Plants
grown under different conditions may vary in color, size, texture growth rate,
yield, flavor, and nutrient density. Food Computers can even program biotic
and abiotic stresses, such as an induced drought, to create desired plant-
based expressions.

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chaostheory
The name 'food computer' is probably better used for the computer / control
portion of their system. Reading their description, 'food factory' or
'automated greenhouse' seem like better names.

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dmritard96
I am wondering how long we will continute to use plants and animals for food
production. From an energy perspective, I see food as digestible bonds and I
am sure there are much more efficient means of creating chemicals with these
bonds that are safe. Fully synthetic foods will enable the next chocolate (in
terms of experience), won't require nearly the amount of energy/land/labor to
produce, won't harm plants or animals, and will be able to be ultra customized
since they won't be derived from biological sources.

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schiffern
Synthetic materials don't come from nothing. Following the supply chain
backwards they're all[1] mined from somewhere, either as fossil fuels or
minerals like potash and limestone. All the NPK fertilizers (which this system
uses) come from mined materials.

Far from "not harming plants or animals," this material extraction comes with
huge (but externalized) ecological, social justice, and wealth concentration
problems. And of course it's completely unsustainable.

Now compare that to how healthy soil functions: microorganisms leach minerals
directly from grains of sand/loam/clay, essentially manufacturing in-situ
minerals into bioavailable form right at the root zone. Nitrogen fixation is
similar, performed by leguminous plants using otherwise wasted sunlight and
ISRU.
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x2H60ritjag](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x2H60ritjag)

[1] _Since I know someone will bring it up, some do come from plants like
soybeans. But mechanized soybean production is primarily either soil mining or
(in areas with badly degraded soil) entirely supported by fossil fertilizers._

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mikekchar
Somewhere or other I heard about a guy named Masunobu Fukuoka. He's written a
book called the "One Straw Revolution". He was a plant biologist who decided
to research very low input farming (not "organic", actually virtually no
inputs other than water). His basic premise was that if you tried to optimise
how nature handled the crops rather than trying to do it yourself as the
farmer, you would get good yields with very little work/cost. He famously
suggested that each person should be given a quarter acre of land and that
they should spend an hour or two a day using his "natural farming techniques"
to feed themselves.

There is some controversy over whether he really got the kinds of yields he
reported with the kind of work he said he did. Part of the problem was that he
got really famous and people would wander over and help him out for a while so
that they could learn his techniques. However, I have a friend who studied
with him and I can report that he literally _does_ manage to feed himself and
his wife all of their fruit and vegetables and only spend some of his spare
time (he is a high school teacher by trade). The biggest piece of labour is
cutting the rice, which takes several days (and which he does all by hand).

When I visited his fields (in Japan), it had been a bad year that had been
compounded by a typhoon just before harvest. My friend's field was in great
shape while you could see that the neighbours had lost at least 20% of their
crop. It was also really interesting to see the difference in wildlife
diversity between the fields. These fields were very small (about the size of
a large house lot in the US) and my friend's lot was _full_ of frogs, snakes
and spiders, while the neighbour's had nothing in them but rice. My friend
said that his neighbour usually produces more rice than he does, but that his
field is always much better in a bad year.

I actually did a 5 year experiment trying to grow food in containers with no
inputs other than water. You need fairly big containers (depth is the most
important thing), but I was surprised how well it worked. At the end of the 5
years I was getting pretty good yields with virtually no work and no inputs.
In the end I had to give up because while the containers grew a lot of food,
they also grew a lot of weeds. The neighbours didn't understand and one day I
got home to find the gas man spraying herbicide on everything. Everybody
thought it was an eyesore and he was delegated to "fix" the problem. :-P

In any case, my experience makes me think that there is room for some research
in farming where we don't try to micro-manage everything.

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nerdponx
Where do you live that spraying herbicide on someone else's garden isn't
considered tresspassing and destroying private property?

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jacobush
Maybe it is, but on the other hand he knew his "garden" (containers with weeds
in them) were a nuisance to the neighbors. Litigation is often possible while
at the same time not really the coolest thing to do.

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mikekchar
I have no idea why you were down voted because that was exactly my reasoning
:-) I live in rural Japan. I admit that while I was really angry about someone
just coming in and pouring herbicide on my plants, I was more upset that
someone didn't just come and talk to me about it. But that's Japanese culture
and in retrospect I should have been a bit more outgoing in trying to explain
to people what I was doing. In the end I screamed at the gas man from half way
across the neighbourhood and he was so embarrassed that he ended up having to
transfer to a different part of the city. It probably sounds strange, but I
still feel really bad about that. He ruined my 5 year long experiment and
killed my plants, but at the time I was yelling at him, it was already done.
Hurting him in order to satisfy my anger doesn't actually improve the
situation.

Edit: I should point out in my own defence that I didn't actually realize
ahead of time that my planters were a nuisance. I weeded out all noxious weeds
and my containers were fairly well isolated with about 10 feet of concrete in
every direction. Also, there was a parking lot on one side of my lot and an
orchard with about a foot of mulch on the ground on the other. The spread of
weeds should not have concerned anyone. I honestly think they thought I had
just abandoned the planters. It's too bad, but a lesson for me in the
importance of optics when you do hair brained experiments at home ;-)

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Trisell
Associated TED talk that turned me onto this project.

[https://www.ted.com/talks/caleb_harper_this_computer_will_gr...](https://www.ted.com/talks/caleb_harper_this_computer_will_grow_your_food_in_the_future?language=en#t-881210)

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ersii
I had a really hard time with the "Food Computer" naming before I watched
Caleb Harper's TED Talk. After watching it, I get it.

Unfortunate that the HN link is to the 'build page' and not to the front page,
which has that TED Talk. Thanks for linking to it.

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dhgood2
Dan from OpenAG here, link to github for those interested.

[https://github.com/OpenAgInitiative](https://github.com/OpenAgInitiative)

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Trisell
Dan is there anyway that we can contribute to the project? I know that you
guys are working to actively move forward, yet there still might be people who
are interested in contributing?

Personally I'm going to go out and build a modified version of this to see if
I can get it to grow a decent variety of plants for my family through the
winter in my garage.

~~~
dhgood2
We are absolutely interested in contribution! We are still setting up the
infrastructure but our hope is that people building our V1 system or systems
inspired by the V1 will share information and advice. Additionally, if there
is something about our HW or SW that you don't like, create a mod, document it
and share it with the community.

If you were to build your own version, it would be great if you documented the
process including material dimensions, fasting techniques, different sensors
or electronics, as well as successes or failures in trying to grow something.
We have software that allows you to control sensors and actuators with a
raspberry pi and Arduino mega. Once some or all the electronics are hooked up,
the box you put it in is really up to you.

Future versions will try to standardize how we attach things, but for right
now my impression is that you want to get up and running ASAP.

So far, the people building our V1 chat with each other in a Slack group. So
we can add you to that one if/when you are ready to start building something.

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goda90
Something I would like to see are systems for identifying plants and handling
them automatically. Eventually combine this with versatile robots that pluck
harmful plants, harvest exactly when ready and maybe even attack harmful
insects and you might be able to replace chemicals and back busting manual
labor. Farms can become food prairies where tons of beneficial plants grow
mixed together, mutually strengthened against weather and disease with robots
tending and harvesting throughout the year.

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hanniabu
After working in the hydroponic and aquaponic industry for 3 years, I can say
that automation for removal of bad plants is the last key needed to create
fully autonomous farms. The margins in farming aren't that high and the labor
for harvesting(already solved by robotics) and separating the good from the
bad plants are the most time consuming and costly tasks. Having that automated
would allow you to have just one or two technicians on hand in a farm rather
than a handful of technicians, a lot of laborers, and a manager.

Edit: by technicians I mean farm technicians, the people that have a
background in plant ecology or are botanists

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okket
Now combine this with aquaponics...

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aquaponics](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aquaponics)

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huangwei_chang
This looks interesting and might be good for the future human. However, I
somehow feel it is a bit sad to make agriculture so industrialized.

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joshvm
This is how carrots are harvested:
[https://imgur.com/gallery/AP4x35k](https://imgur.com/gallery/AP4x35k)

You know those cute pictures of people picking fruit on your orange juice
bottle? Nope, this is how we get oranges:
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Av17eM1Ruyo](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Av17eM1Ruyo)

Of course a lot of farming is simply done by mass labour, which works if a
little inefficient. On the high tech side we have GPS-controlled tractors and
farmers can order up hyperpsectral images of their fields to check crop
performance. Modern agriculture is extremely heavily industrialised to satisfy
the demands of the billions of hungry people around the world.

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ruraljuror
This is really interesting. Thank you.

I'm not sure how literally the OP meant the word "industrialized," but to me
it seems like the goal of the PFC is actually less agricultural
industrialization. If it's sad that a computer is helping to grow your food,
ok. But I think the point is that a local farmer could improve their crops, or
you could even grow food in your own house.

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joshvm
I think the concept is awesome and I'm totally up for building one, though
having looked at their Github it's pretty rough and ready right now.

On the one hand I think there is something cool about old school gardening and
actually growing your own stuff. On the other, the geek in me wants to hack
the hell out of it. One of the major problems I have every time I want to grow
salad is that it gets destroyed by snails and indoor gardening solves the pest
problem quite nicely. Being able to download an ideal growth profile for a
particular seed would be great.

