The Farm Hack River of Activity
Stream of Forum Topics
| In 50 characters or less... | Posted by | Post date | Last comment | Number of Comments | # of Comments new to you | |
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Great use of Google Doc spreadsheet | dorn | Monday, January 6, 2014 - 11:16am | Sunday, March 2, 2014 - 12:08pm | 2 | |
| A New(?) way to get excess heat out of a greenhouse, plus it recycles the heat. | meredith848 | Sunday, January 5, 2014 - 7:32pm | Sunday, January 5, 2014 - 7:36pm | 1 | ||
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Manual garlic planter | Agrodealer | Saturday, January 4, 2014 - 5:26am | Saturday, January 4, 2014 - 5:26am | 0 | |
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Automatic garlic planter | Agrodealer | Saturday, January 4, 2014 - 5:23am | Saturday, January 4, 2014 - 5:23am | 0 | |
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offering services | meredith848 | Wednesday, January 1, 2014 - 6:21pm | Wednesday, January 1, 2014 - 6:21pm | 0 | |
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use heat storage! | meredith848 | Wednesday, January 1, 2014 - 6:17pm | Wednesday, January 1, 2014 - 6:17pm | 0 | |
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Please let me know which herbs this works for, as you have mint in the photo, which does sprout well in water. | meredith848 | Wednesday, January 1, 2014 - 6:12pm | Wednesday, January 1, 2014 - 6:12pm | 0 | |
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Summary of FarmHack.net Activity for 2013 | R.J. Steinert | Monday, December 30, 2013 - 1:15pm | Monday, December 30, 2013 - 7:07pm | 1 | |
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Outcomes from Triange Build Day | dorn | Friday, December 27, 2013 - 12:43am | Friday, February 28, 2014 - 10:42am | 3 | |
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Black Soldier Fly - Wintering Over | adriannetraub | Thursday, December 19, 2013 - 11:49am | Thursday, December 19, 2013 - 11:49am | 0 |
I think that could work Louis. But you might want it to move only a certain amount per day-- for example you maybe wouldn't want the chicken house to go the whole 50' of the winch cable in one day, but rather 10' per day for 5 days. How easy would it be to add in a "controller" that would limit the length of winch travel per time period?
Some of the tools we have in our farm shop Metal Shop - 15X30" Harrison Lathe, 9X42 Bridgeport Mill, #22 Buffalo Drill Press, 4 Spindle Electro Mecano Drillpress, Boyar Schultz 6X12 Super Deluxe Surface Grinder, Champion 7hp 2 stage air compressor, Miller 300A Shopmate Multiprocess welder, Lincoln 250A IdealArc multiprocess welder, wire feeders and watercooled TIG for the welders, Oxy-Acetylene torches, Presto-lite torch, Hossfeld Bender, Kalamazoo Horizontal Bandsaw, 20" Delta Vertical Bandsaw w/Blade welder, Miller Plasma Cutter, 2 ton portable Gantry w/Budgit chain hoist, hydraulic press, parts washer, sand blaster, + necessary ancillary equipment, benches, handtools and portable tools. The shop is in a 24X40 space divided into 3 bays - a 14X24 machine shop, a 8X24 parts storage area w/mezzanine above and a 18X24 shop bay for fab work and equipment repair
Wood Shop - Powermatic TA66 tablesaw, DeWalt Radial Arm Saw, Delta drillpress, Walker Turner Radial Drillpress, Delta 13" planer, Powermatic 8" jointer, Delta shaper, Delta Overarm Router, Jet 18" Bandsaw, 12X36 lathe, + workbenches, hand tools and portable power tools. The woodshop is in a 26X28 room adjacent to the metal shop
Other equipment - Landa pressure washer, portable forge, anvil, blacksmith tools, generator, ladders, scaffolding, 3pt mount forklift
If you are looking for many of the tools listed above, we have a small tool company (almost 100% U.S.-made tools) for oxy-acetylene & propane torch welding, welding supplies (like flux-core rod) metal repairs & fabrication, etc, including hammers, files, snips, shears, layout tools, sheet metal / shaping machines (air power hammers, flow-forming tools, english wheels). Also, a number of instructional DVDs that show you how to do the sorts of repairs you might need to do on things like farm equipment (example: rust repairs & patch panels, or basics of gas welding). We also have training classes for those really interested in learning more about the tools including "Metalworking Fundamentals." Call for a free 88-page catalog (it is full of lots of useful metalworking information and resources): 530-292-3506. Or you can check our website: www.tinmantech.com We also have a few videos on YouTube you can check out (Search "tinmantech" on YouTube). Good luck!
I have started a floating wiki to keep the various lists of tools - we can graduate this to a full tool wiki and/or divide it further as it evolves. I think that it might be useful to divide shop tool kits from field tool kits. I know we have recently refined our tractor tool kit lists on our farm.
Here is a link to the "floating" tool wiki for shop tool kits
Processor speed is a concern not for computational reasons but for timing - we need the difference in time of flight for the radio waves which travel at the speed of light so we need a fast enough clock for whatever accuracy we want. I think that once this type of system is established, it will give much more accurate and reliable readings then the other method we discussed.
The other method, which I believe you are referring to, is to simply read the signal strength (already built into Zigbee) and extrapolate from there but as we discussed the other weekend, analog signals are noisy and this one in particular has many different variables affecting it other than distance. I think that it would be a quick and easy way to get ball park estimates but would be difficult to get very precise.
What if you just had a 12v solar panel hooked up to the wench directly? That way you save the expense of a battery assuming you don't mind it not running at a constant rate.
I have been wondering about using 12v winches to move chicken tractors / henhouses. They can run off of a car battery and move things very slowly. A solar panel could recharge it easily. Once a week the farmer could move whatever the winch is attached to once the cable is mostly wound up (auger in the ground, heavy thing, or attach cable to another tree).
This appears to be http://www.farmshow.com/
Something that has been used with some success in the Open Source world is bounties... One would offer a bounty for a solution to a problem.
I know its not much different from an "X Prize", but tends to attract those with the knowledge and time to perform "one off" projects. But things like explanation and documentation could be a problem.
Of course, in all cases, patent/royalty-free would be required. And this brings up an ugly potential issue that would need a lawyer. Groan.
We can always transmit the data we get from the radios on the mobile units, upload it to the anchor points, and let a server do the computations. Supposedly the anchors are fixed positions (and may be GPS enabled).
However, as I remember my radio theory, we will need a number of samples to get a reasonable approximation to use in differential distance computation to the anchor points. Each radio will have to be calibrated to determine what its "reasonable sample rate" would be. Or does the Zigbee already do this? (does it provide a signal strength, or do we have to get the analog strengths in real-time)? Or am I thinking too deeply?
For repair work
You could look at getting a york rake for your tractor and use it to windrow the rocks which come up after tilling. You would still need to hand pick them, but it would be quicker to pick out of a windrow than if they are scattered around your field. You can also rent a bobcat with a rock picking attachment once a year, or at least until most of the rocks in the top 12" of soil have been removed.
Finally for planting in beds, I am very happy with the DeWit Bed Rake I picked up from Earth Tools. It has a wider spacing between the tines than a regular iron rake and does a great job of removing rocks and undecomposed organic matter from a bed.
Hi,
I'm Andy. I have a small certified organic and GAPs certified vegetable and fruit farm in Central NY. We are primarily a CSA farm, but also have a farmstand on the farm and will be selling at one Farmers Market this season.
We like to play in the shop on our farm and have built a variety of tools we use on the farm including several sprayers, a bed flamer, a potato planter, and a hydraulically controlled offset mount for our Rotary One Transplanter.
We also aren't shy about purchasing equipment which can save us time and make some money. One of our best purchases in the last few years was a paperpot transplanter.
One of the projects we are working on this season is automating irrigation in the high tunnels. We'll start with DIG controllers, but ultimately, we are looking at a more sophisticated solution which can run off our farm network.
Before starting the farm, 10 years ago, I worked in manufacturing for 15 years. My educational background is in Materials Science and Industrial Engineering.
Hey Andy, Is there a tutorial or bill of materials or pictures of that portable micro-hydro unit?
Hey Eric,
Can't tell you how excited I am to hear about your progress! I've uploaded the current Fido library to Github but I have a few caveats based on what your post.
If you remember a post I made a few weeks ago, Fido was getting strapped for memory. In response to that, I switched to an analog temperature sensor (see new BoM) instead of the DS18B20. It won't be difficult for you to change the getTemp() function such that it will work with the DS again but you'll probably run out of flash memory, especially if you also have the LCD. Thus, if you want to keep all those components, you might have to strip down some of the things from the Fido library I've uploaded; a good place to start is to play around with those char arrays in the beginning of the code. They're written in PROGMEM but I think you'll catch on quickly if you read this post on my site.
Anyway, let me know if you have any questions! Oh and I actually have a question for you: is that voltage divider giving you fairly reliable reads? I changed mine out for a logic shifter and it's been more consistent for me; I ordered quite a few and I'd be happy to send you one if you PM me your address (they cost 40 cents but if you go about trying to buy just one you'll end up spending 5 dollars).
+1
Would you pair each one of these with an Arduino? If so, that seems like a hassle and you might be better off using Xbee chips since they would be able to take your readings and send them without an Arduino and you would be saving some money and development time.
It might be a fun project to buy the RF transmitter/receive modules and pair them with AVR chips yourself (ie: buying the chip and not the Arduino) and you might finagle something cheaper than an Xbee chip but otherwise I'd recommend Xbee with an analog sensor.
Just a concept at this point, but I'd like to try out something like this as an RF transmitter / receiver:
http://www.sparkfun.com/products/10535 http://www.sparkfun.com/products/10533
Perhaps be able to make sub $20 sensor / transmitters that would send temperature information back to a base unit with the cell phone connection.
I am setting up a new farming area where I would have 8 to 10 mini tunnels. Some might be covered in plastic, some might not. It would be critical in the spring to know how hot it is in each of them.
Here is a link to a discussion that started at the Intervale/Essex event this weekend. http://farmhack.net/forums/root-washer-improvement Maybe we should merge these posts or create a tool page.
Thanks for helping me understand this. It sounds like a fun project.
will do- I've dreamed about pump storage- it seems efficient and simple enough to fix and as you say multipurpose- nearly perfect!
No problem, it can live at our house until then- you are welcome to stay with us any time. Just let us know if you need it sooner. My brother also lives in Boston, so it might make its way to you via him.
It was great to meet you this weekend, I'm excited to start hacking away at electrons soon (instead of just steel).
Cheers,
Andy
These are images of the two root washers on the Intervale, in Burlington VT. The first is from Intervale Community Farm, the second is the the Intervale Farm Equipment Co-operative root washer.
Thank you for the semantic check there! Trilateration is indeed the correct term.
I imagine that triangulation might be able to get figured out but I have a hunch that we may sacrifice range by doing that.
Insofar as the clock limits, let's say we want to be accurate within 1m. Since the speed of light is 3x10^8 m/s, we need a clock of 3x10^8 Hz, or 300 Mhz (I think?).
The Beaglebone has a 720Mhz processor and that should work and hopefully we'll be able to utilize the full accuracy of that clock (I've never tried measuring how fast radio signals travel and haven't done all my research yet). I imagine that there will be some constants involved with sending and receiving a message before we can put a time stamp on it but I think that they can be calibrated those out since those will always be the same with the same hardware.
Glad it's been found! Things are pretty warm down here in Boston so I won't need it for a few months but pass it onto Severine if you get a chance (I'll be going to Hudson at some point). Otherwise, the Adirondacks were beautiful and I may just get up in your parts again this summer - maybe I could pick it up then?
If we get around to winter and we still haven't passed it back maybe I'll humbly request a mailing!
It would be really cool do do a couple farm hacker's shop layouts and inventory - we might be able to make some generalizations and help each other improve. I know my layout could certainly be much better. This is where a sketchup library might be really fun to do a few shop layouts.
There are still some logistical questions that need to be resolved but, insofar as I can tell, the general theory works. Let me know if you foresee any problems.
You have three reference nodes which GPS transmitters, thus you know their distance and direction from each other. Each of these reference nodes is also ZigBee enabled up to a certain range; the overlap of these three ranges is where we can accurately triangulate trilaterate.
Any slave node roaming within the overlap of three node ranges emits a message and the distance can be calculated based on Time Difference of Arrival; that is, the difference in arrive time to the three nodes can uniquely determine a location.
I'm not sure where direction may become an issue...
Hey Louis,
we did find your jacket at the grange after everyone left- where should we send it?
Andy andy[at]pedal-power.com
Interesting read. So time of flight is based on trilateration and not triangulation. If a method of triangulation could be figured out, would this overcome the processor speed issues?
I don't know much about how location is figured within a wireless network, I'm going to check out your link. I'm coming from a sailing background where we take a compass bearing from 2, or better 3, objects like water towers or light houses. By plotting these angles onto a chart from their known position, (it's marked on the chart) you can fix your position by finding where these lines meet. I guess that's where I'm coming from in thinking that triangulation has to do with compass direction and not distance.