
FarmBot – Open-Source CNC Farming [video] - ctingom
https://farmbot.io/
======
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.

~~~
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.

~~~
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...](http://botanycentral.providence.wikispaces.net/file/view/coca1.jpg/185968069/614x464/coca1.jpg)

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

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11845573](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11845573)

------
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.

~~~
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...](http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2014/07/140717-japan-
largest-indoor-plant-factory-food/)

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

------
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.

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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.

~~~
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)

~~~
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.

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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/](http://openag.media.mit.edu/) is a better
system for food growth.

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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? ....

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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.

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Jack000
site seems to be down? I'm guessing it's this project:
[https://hackaday.io/project/2552-farmbot-open-source-cnc-
far...](https://hackaday.io/project/2552-farmbot-open-source-cnc-farming)

~~~
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...

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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](https://youtu.be/3vgjJikt9B4?t=41s)

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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?) :-)

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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"?

~~~
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/](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.

~~~
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.

~~~
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.

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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](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6451350)

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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.

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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.

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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.

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

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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.

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ElijahLynn
Holy fucking amazing!

