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Looking for stale-bedding / occultation / tarping advice |
dcaisenbrey |
Friday, October 2, 2015 - 3:07pm |
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Would welcome a farm hack event at our place! |
DragonflyRanch |
Monday, September 28, 2015 - 11:56am |
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Just curious: would you add a set of welded coulters to front frame if you were using this drill to plant into heavy residue? |
greenunderbelly |
Monday, September 21, 2015 - 11:52pm |
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Bicitractor : Culticyle from Farming Soul |
Farming Soul |
Monday, September 21, 2015 - 12:13pm |
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Dry-land tool: Land Imprinter |
Joel_BC |
Tuesday, September 15, 2015 - 10:51am |
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Farm Hack Manchester, UK, October 2015 |
carolinejaneward |
Tuesday, September 15, 2015 - 8:31am |
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Garlic Planter |
possumhillfarm |
Tuesday, September 15, 2015 - 7:57am |
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Ingenious homemade homestead device & equipment sites |
Joel_BC |
Friday, September 4, 2015 - 10:17pm |
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Farm Hack @ Draft Animal Powered Field Days |
user1 |
Thursday, September 3, 2015 - 7:32pm |
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Search function/map for people and others |
ganafets82 |
Wednesday, August 26, 2015 - 5:24am |
Welcome to the Farm Hack Community! Have you checked out the Open Pipe kit project and FarmOS on Farm Hack? I think that there is a lot of overlap. Would be great to get cross pollination going.
I'd like to see something like the Allis Chalmers G or Hefty G but a more modern version of it like they have in Europe which they call Tool Carriers.
On both the Mazzotti and Tracmaster, you can adjust the length of the tractor via the center bar that goes to the front axle. Of course, you are limited to a certain length. They both appear to have hydraulic 3 point on the rear and mid-mount. One of them appears to also have a PTO at mid-mount as well in the rear.
A lot of these appear to be used in pine tree nurseryes. I know of place in Canada that sells the Egedal Tracmaster. However, it is very cost prohibitive at $100k for the 2WD version (400) plus shipping from Denmark.
I've been looking at hydraulic motors, stearable motors, pumps and systems to power a tractor like this. I also like the idea of having a hydraulic 3 point in mid and rear. If one used a a parallelogram setup cultivator like a Steketee Hoeing Element you wouldn't necessarily need a depth control (draft control?).
Once setup, I'd like to use is a front mounted side dresser or compost tea sprayer, mid mount cultivator and rear mounted sweeps to loosen the tire tracks. I'd also like to be able to possible remove the diesel engine for electric/battery power.
The one issue I see is switching out mid-mount implements. My easiest solution is to utilize an implement caddy but would probably require you to be on a concrete surface to easily move the caddies around.
The creeper gear would be nice as well to pull a transplanter reducing the need for an additional tractor for smaller farms.
Update: A French company Terrateck has created something similar to this. It's called the Culti'track. It's maybe a bit more paired down version than those I listed above. http://www.terrateck.com/en/portes-outils/50-tracteur-porte-outils-maraicher-culti-track.html
Hi RSiegfried,
Thank you very much for your response. Great info here. The system you mention for $500, is that off the shelf or a DIY job? I'm trying to figure out what do non-tech farmers use. How much would the annual data package and cloud solution typical cost (maybe tricky to put a value on this I guess).
Seems that power is still the issue but a lot of progress here.
Donal.
Hi Bruce,
Thanks for the great response. When I say wireless I'm was thinking aspects of cellular and 802.11 but whatever is best. from you response, it is clear that power is a big issue so maybe something like Zigbee or SIGFOX used for IoT would be a better fit to reduce power consumption. But I guess you still have the issue of maintaining the batteries...
The watering idea is interesting, watering at night as I assume the rates are cheaper?
I would be interested in hearing of any off the shelf products or service companies and also interested to see why people don't use wireless solution more.
Thanks again,
Donal.
Many farmers are collecting data on yields, labor, sales, etc. to allow them to evaluate every enterprise on the farm, and to build profitable business. The importance of financial data to the life of a farm is critical. In a similar way, monitoring environmental conditions on a farm can provide improved yields, reduced risks of loss, and just reduce the overall feeling of uncertainty that many farmers have when away from the farm.
There are sensors for air and soil temperature, humidity, soil moisture, frost, light, gates open/closed, water levels, battery condition, and dozens of others. These sensors can be fitted with different transmitting technologies that range from 300 feet, to 1000's of feet, even out to as much as 9 miles. The sensors data is often gathered by a "gateway" which pushes the data to the cloud via a cellular connection. Farmers can connect to the data via computer, tablet, or phone. Alerts and alarms can be set to notify the farmer when any sensor detects unfavorable conditions.
Powering sensors and wireless transmitters has historically required solar panels and 12 v batteries. But many technologies are emerging that are focused on minimizing power usage, allowing 3v and 5v batteries to last years. New batteries are further extending sensor life. Wireless sensors using 2 AA batteries are now available that can easily run for 1 to 2 years without battery changes, perhaps even longer. The gateways typically require a AC power supply, and thus are located in a barn, heated greenhouse, or farm office.
Currently most of these systems are designed to serve server rooms, commercial cold storage, and the pharmaceutical industry. But they can be adapted to the farm with little effort. These systems can monitor your walk-in cooler, heated greenhouse in winter, and hoop house in the summer. They can remind you to charge your 12 v battery, that the barn door is open, or that the power is off on the water pump. They can measure soi moisture, and tell you when to irrigate, or turn on the water itself. A basic system can be put on a farm for about $500, plus some annual charges for cellular plans and cloud based data storage. All of your data from different systems can now be stored and accessed from a single location in the cloud.
Small farmers will succeed by farming smarter, not hard. And data is at the heart of that approach.
Do you mean cellular wireless, 802.14.* wireless, 802.11 wireless, ...?
Otherwise, there's lots of things that could be "connected", but must be connected without a wire. Fields, stock, product, equipment, ... Fields for monitoring soil health, stock for monitoring their health, product for location and maximum sell date, equipment for maintenance records and uses... There's lots of things, and a few tools already on this site - just need more, and its becoming apparent that a method of integrating the info produced by the tools is needed.
One of the biggest ancillary "problems" that goes with wireless, is how to get the power to the device - if only to support the device and its ability to transmit/receive. Batteries go only so far, and are a pain to maintain when they are remote. There needs to be better solutions!
Another thing is recordkeeping - for example, you move goats to another pasture - having that move automatically recorded for you would save a lot of time at the end of (a perhaps hectic) day, and it would be accurate. Same with equipment... I don't know how often I've missed fluid changes because I couldn't remember how often I've use the tractor/truck/... And plants, not only would it be nice to know how wet/fertile/... your soil is - you could save lots of water by not watering it if you didn't need to... Or if you had it automatically watered at night instead of during the day.
The list goes on and on...
--Bruce
Hey there,
You should contact RuralHub, they will probably be a good place to start.
https://www.facebook.com/RuralHub/?pnref=about.overview
http://www.ruralhub.it/
--Daniel
There's a company in Saskatchewan that specialized in solar powered livestock waterers. Basically, theres two types of systems.
First one is a trenched water line into a vertical casing in the ground. The bottom of the casing is sealed and long enough to go below the frost line. There's a submersible pump wired to a controller and powered by solar panels. There's a motion switch to detect the presence of animals, this starts the pump and feeds the through built atop the casing. When the motion detector stops seeing animals, its cuts out the pump and the water flows back under the freezing point.
The other uses a insulated through and the turnover created by the animals drinking to ensure water doesn't freeze.
www.kellnsolar.com
Much better description on the site. Will post pictures of ours at home. They run amazing and I live in Manitoba, Canada where weather gets really cold. We use this to keep the cows on pasture throughout winter in order to bale graze.
There's a company in Saskatchewan that specialized in solar powered livestock waterers. Basically, theres two types of systems.
First one is a trenched water line into a vertical casing in the ground. The bottom of the casing is sealed and long enough to go below the frost line. There's a submersible pump wired to a controller and powered by solar panels. There's a motion switch to detect the presence of animals, this starts the pump and feeds the through built atop the casing. When the motion detector stops seeing animals, its cuts out the pump and the water flows back under the freezing point.
The other uses a insulated through and the turnover created by the animals drinking to ensure water doesn't freeze.
www.kellnsolar.com
Much better description on the site. Will post pictures of ours at home. They run amazing and I live in Manitoba, Canada where weather gets really cold. We use this to keep the cows on pasture throughout winter in order to bale graze.
There's a company in Saskatchewan that specialized in solar powered livestock waterers. Basically, theres two types of systems.
First one is a trenched water line into a vertical casing in the ground. The bottom of the casing is sealed and long enough to go below the frost line. There's a submersible pump wired to a controller and powered by solar panels. There's a motion switch to detect the presence of animals, this starts the pump and feeds the through built atop the casing. When the motion detector stops seeing animals, its cuts out the pump and the water flows back under the freezing point.
The other uses a insulated through and the turnover created by the animals drinking to ensure water doesn't freeze.
www.kellnsolar.com
Much better description on the site. Will post pictures of ours at home. They run amazing and I live in Manitoba, Canada where weather gets really cold. We use this to keep the cows on pasture throughout winter in order to bale graze.
I cross-posted to this forum post in a comment on that article.
Are these links displaying as hyperlinks for you guys? They're appearing as plain text for me...
Hi Sarah,
I've worked on the Fido, the greenhouse alert system that sits in a greenhouse and sends a text message or email when the temperature is out of bounds. I've considered Thermodo for the Fido design but didn't go with it because interfacing Thermodo with a Raspberry Pi took an extra board that blew up the cost higher than going with a USB thermometer. With Android phones falling in price I think there is potential there that an Android phone could end up replacing the Raspberry Pi, in which case a Thermistor with a 3.5mm Audio connector would be a good fit for the design.
- RJ
Does anyone know of a tool that does what a tractor-driven roller crimper does with cover crops, but is operated by hand, without the compaction created by a tractor roller?
I'm working with a fellow who has 40 100 foot long raised beds, that he is growing vegetables on with a no-till system. We're trying to get him much more involved with using cover crops, but the means to terminate them by hand, is currently lacking. He doesn't use horses.
Thank you,
Baruch
Well, I've got 3 base stations and 5 ear tags working. Still waiting for nickel & dime hardware (connectors for batteries, boxes, ...)
The base station software is 95% complete - all that's left is (maybe) coding the failover logic when we lose wi-fi access and including the time-of-flight numbers for each ear-tag (even though it will be wrong).
Also, configuration of the system is non-trivial, so I'll probably have to code some auto-configuration logic into the system - but not before the end of the month.
The ear tags are a lot heavier than I wanted; the batteries are over 2/3 of the weight, but I wanted 1 mile distance between tags, and that consumes a lot of "juice". I may be able to conserve power by setting sleep intervals for the tags, but not in the first release!
Otherwise the base stations and "ear tags" are ready for outdoor testing. I just have to cut holes in the boxes and shrink wrap the ear tags. Then we can do some testing - so probably not until next weekend!
I expect to publish all the code and do presentations in January 2016. And maybe do some documenting...
The images are of a base station (out of the white weather-proof enclosure), and a top view of the base station. The last picture is of the "ear tag" transceivers - left one is a debugging connection hooked up to the computer, and the right one (with battery) will be shrinked-wrapped and applied to an ear tag.