RoboGroMo

A cheap greenhouse bar heater connected to a relay controlled by a Pigrow, i've had this box (bluebox) set up the same for a few years but not in use for the last months - just turned it back on and happy to see it's still working as intended.

Did notice because the OS on the Raspberry Pi is so old that it's using a prior version of python that isn't compatible with a few of the scripts used by the new gui - it should be fairly easy to update it without affecting anything else, though if not i'll copy the config files and install a fresh Raspian (RasberryPi OS) then upload the config files back in place. No rush though it's doing it's job well.

It's at a bit of an awkward stage to make content about at the moment because to finalize any part of it the other parts need to be at least vaguely in-place and tested, it is all coming together well though - minor a few disasters such as the leak i'm fixing today which soaked my carpet.

I have a video on the EC sensor coming soon, then turbidity (cloudiness), and pH. Any other ideas for water based sensors to test? Already done basic level sensors which work the same as switches.

Also going to be adding air quality sensors, maybe Co2 or something? I've experimented a couple of times but never been happy with any of the sensors i've tried so suggestions would be great,

The timelapse part of it is working really well which is nice, as i'll be using that part of the pigrow more i'll probably get round to porting that into the new pigrow gui with some upgrades - i am still working on upgrading and porting the user logs tab also, i think it's only graphs after that then we can discontinue the original gui and finalize the new improved one -- the graphs tab is going to require a lot of work to reorganise and improve especially with all the new datawall features, but i do want to get it done soon.

It's looking pretty scrappy at the moment but it's really starting to come together, i made that little switch and LED box to hold the bits I added in the last video and when i get the pigrow in a case with a ribbon cable between the GPIO and sensor breakout, controls, and relays it'll hopefully be fairly easy to replicate on other boxes i have planned - a desert garden, mushroom growbox, decay box, and various experimental boxes. (also i haven't forgotten about the windowsill one, that'll be upgraded and black in place soon hopefully. my working pigrows are still just doing their thing quietly, i check the night temp graphs occasionally but they mostly look after themselves, and now it's actually possible to get zeros again i'll put some together to go outside with some sensors and solenoid controlled watering (hopefully if the testing and setup in the moss garden testing box goes well i'll be able to have a sensor unit i can put into an outdoor water butt to monitor, maintain and dispense rain water)

There are a couple of cool features that i'll be testing out at some point, they now have two dual use camera and display ports which will make it much easier to make a camera that measures photosynthesis (using a regular and IR camera next to each other) - you might have seen be doing this before using two zeros which worked but was awkward, this should make it much easier and maybe we can film a spring timelapse of a landscape changing.

the new PCIe access is likely to bring some interesting new additions to the Pi ecosystem, while a lot of focus is likely to be on crypto we'll no doubt see a lot of GPU/Compute modules tailed to AI which might be fun to play with plus some of the performance upgrades already help that a lot which hopefully will allow us to start building some interesting Computer Vision tools into the pigrow, maybe even experiment with some robotics control if and when cheap and useful tools make that fun.

I can't see any fundamental changes which will require changes to the Pigrow, i assume the new dual cam ports will work with the new libcam tools so that shouldn't be a problem but of course until i'm able to test it i won't be able to say for sure and as it's expensive i doubt i'll purchase one until i have a justified use case (probably the stereo camera)

Pigrow Development News: currently filming testing and set up of water sensors for sagemoss testbox, will be making a datawall script for that and checking through everything for improvements in how it handles a cycling water system (as used in hydro grows) so hopefully that video will be out soon and close followed by others finalizing my sagemos testbox.

love the move away from just seeing the choice for land use as solar or agriculture when it can be both, using the infrastructure of power generation to help protect growing plants could really help increase productivity for a small-holding especially when things like watering systems are tied into the PV infrastructure and we finally get round to taking advantage of roof space on things like barns.

I've seen some cool pictures of farms in arid regions using solar panels above irrigation to reduce evaporation too, i think solar mixed into where it's other properties are useful or where it's a good fit looks and works so much better than the neat rows of solar farms.

I've been chatting to another user on here (https://slrpnk.net/u/JacobCoffinWrites who does the cool photobash images of solarpunk scenes) and it really got me thinking about solar concentrators so i went on a bit of a binge learning about them, there are so many really cool designs and so many things a source of heat like that can be used for.

One idea i especially like is using it to power absorption refrigeration (like off-grid gas powered refrigerators use) so when the sun is hot you can focus it's power and use it to cool your house -- then when it's starting to get cooler switch it to heating, ideally heating a medium which will retain the heat so you can distribute it through the night. For agricultural use it could heat greenhouses and drying rooms, industrially there's an endless amount of possibilities. Even recreationally it could be great, cutting out the cost of heating a pool or hot tub - could really make some off-grid luxury.

A great youtube channel with various diy examples is Sergiy Yurko, who's still managing to make great videos despite living in Ukraine - https://www.youtube.com/@sergiyyurko8668/videos

and https://www.youtube.com/@GREENPOWERSCIENCE/videos has some really cool videos too, like demonstrating using a fresnal lens to melt metal

I made a video about various future uses of technology we might see beside the seaside, would love to hear peoples opinions - it's more A.I. and automation focused than solarpunk but most of the technologies kinda fit here.

I'm trying to design a feature i've wanted for a while, it tracks the progress of your grow to make it easy to see things like 'these said they take 12 weeks from flower to finishing, yours have been in 13 weeks now..' as well as compare them to prior grows and get info like 'you've grown these seeds 6 times and with the new lights it's growing much faster' or 'this variety is growing faster than any other you've tried but the yield is lower' as well as things like 'grows where the temperature dipped below 10C took 12% longer on average to flower' (all those are random numbers btw).

I'd like to have it so the log and gui tools are generated based on a template file, there'd be an online repo which you can select templates from or upload your own to for others to use, hopefully we'd get a good selection of useful options that way and it could be great for doing citizen science community projects like all recording the same log info then comparing at the end.

Here's how i see it working for users;

User presses a button to start a new plant log, they select a template based on the plant type (preloaded, downloaded or custom) this loads a blank form with the initial questions ready to be filled in (appropriate type for the field - dropdown, date picker, text input, check boxes).

When the initial information is input the program generates a simple graphic display showing progress, as time progresses the user reports events (either through the GUI, messaging apps, or etc) which get added to the log and displayed in the graphic - also optionally included is log information from the growbox, high-low temps, humidity, soil moisture level, watering times, etc.

There will also be optional features to have periodic visual inspections, it will message the user through the selected means (in app notifications, push notifications, message to reddit/lemmy user, LED activation, etc) the user will then input the required information - for example; leaf / node count, height, general health / appearance, etc. This allows creation of more interesting data-points to graph and can hopefully be integrated with tools like CV node counting at a future date. The idea is to log things which can help compare future grows of the same seed type or to compare variants.

When the grow is complete the user will select the option to end grow (selecting if it was harvested, moved, failed optionally selection a rating) the data is packaged with other appropriate data and stored. When the user starts the same type of grow again they will be able to show comparisons with other grows - e.g. drawing out markers when prior grows were switched to flower and how long after that until they were harvested. This should make it much easier to notice what negatively and positively affects growing, what certain traits are associated with and seeing how new equipment (especially lights) changes the growth rate and yield.

example

Plant log

plant type : Cannabis - photoperiod (name of the form preset used) plant name / ID : sum23cheese1 (unique plant identifier, default suggestion is autogen from date, type and numeric) seed origin : named seedbank seed type : the strain name, feminised notes: a text string used to put any info about the plant worth noting, copy paste of seed blurb or important details

grow medium : soil

expected growth duration : seed - 1-2 weeks veg - 2 months flower - 2 months

seed planting date : 14th June 2023

stuff logged through duration --

date transfer into current box : [cultivation, veg, flower]

prune log : date + what was done [trim, top, tie] + notes

date light duration change : aug302023 - 12:12 new ratio (on:off)

observation log : [problem noticed [bugs, discolouration, mold], new features [first true leaves, first flowers]

user measured : [every week] height = 45cm

harvested date : [date of actual harvest] opinion based rating : 7/10 final plant weight : optional dried yield weight : optional

As normal I've not been doing much coding during june-july as the weather is nice out, i have been working on other stuff related to the project though (as well as maintaining my own mental well being and motivation by enjoying nature which is something i think is very important for everyone). I'll have my high-humidity box (sagemoss) fully operational soon which will serve as a space to test operation of a range of water based sensors and various monitoring tools such as datawalls and etc while i'm focusing on improving their implementation - i've also been investigating options for running a small private ActivityPub server of some description (lemmy or mastodon likely) on the pi which could open up lots of interesting possibilities - such as replacing the old reddit message bot which could control some features on the pigrow and send alerts.

Great news for the project is the raspberry pi shortage does seem to have come to an end so check out https://rpilocator.com/ and you'll probably be able to find an official retailer in your area that has stock - it means i've finally got some pi's that i can build into projects without having to constantly rebuild to test other things so hopefully i'll be able to make all the projects i've got planned and do longer term testing, as well as various water sensors and tools i've already started designing and getting the pieces together for my outdoor solar-powered build (a continuation of the solar panel monitoring one from before using Hall-effect sensors) so i'll make a video about that after I make one about getting sagemoss running. (oh and i haven't forgotten about my windowcill one, i'll get that put back in place soon and update on that)

I'm also starting to try and design a system for allowing everyone to work together on the various stages of design and development for new features, i'd love to be able to work as a community on designing things by identifying areas needing testing, designing test processes to get the relevant information and working out the best ways to implement it.

I will also have a load of new code features i'll be adding into the pigrow soon, mostly focusing on ease of use and ease of access.

Not really solar-punk themed as they're a bit too historical but hopefully close enough in theme to be interesting to people here, librivox is great resource and a great example of what can be achieved when people work together.

http://librivox.org/noli-me-tangere-by-jose-rizal/ -- Truly brilliant and beautiful work by the revolutionary hero of the Philippines, largely speaking against the colonialist priests of the catholic church and the inequity of the system imposed on the people; wonderful and rich story with great characterisation and seriously good asides about life, politic and the world.

https://librivox.org/the-ragged-trousered-philanthropists-by-robert-tressell/ -- Written by a jobbing painter, this gritty tale of the life of a working man in Victorian England is powerful both for it's prose and passion, sad as it is inspiring this work is a must read for anyone interesting in the history of labour and working class sentiment.

https://librivox.org/a-dolls-house-by-henrik-ibsen/ - One of Ibsen's many fantastic plays, in this Nora realises she isn't a song bird and dances a tarantella wile delivering some wonderfully powerful lines to a great collection of characters. Also check out Peer Quint it's probably one of the best plays ever written, also it's soundtrack by Grieg is brilliant.

https://librivox.org/hard-times-by-charles-dickens/ -- a classic which shouldn't be overlooked simply for being so popular, if you didn't study it in school then certainly give it a listen, a vital work of English literature from one of the great progressive fathers of English Reform. In it Dickens introduces us to the many hardships, problems and inequities of life in Victorian England.

https://librivox.org/les-miserables-vol-1-by-victor-hugo/ - Brilliant novel, considered one of the 19th centuries best 'Beginning in 1815 and culminating in the 1832 June Rebellion in Paris, the novel follows the lives and interactions of several characters, particularly the struggles of ex-convict Jean Valjean and his experience of redemption.'

https://librivox.org/king-coal-by-upton-sinclair/ -- Sinclair expresses his socialist viewpoints from the perspective of a single protagonist, Hal Warner, caught up in the schemes and plots of the oppressive American capitalist system. The book itself is based on the 1914-1915 Colorado coal strikes.

https://librivox.org/news-from-nowhere-by-william-morris/ - 'News from Nowhere (1890) is a classic work combining utopian socialism and soft science fiction written by the artist, designer and socialist pioneer William Morris.'

https://librivox.org/looking-backward-2000-1887-by-edward-bellamy/ - Fascinating time-travel story about a guy who moves forward to the year two thousand to find a utopia, kinda a disheartening read in 2015...

https://librivox.org/the-woodlanders-by-thomas-hardy-2/ -- [also his other works like Jude the Obscure] A powerful assault on the class structure and sentiment of the day, set in the semi-fictional Wessex it shows how sticking with 'the system' does nobody any favours, it's not a fair or sensible system at all. (this version read by Tadhg is really beautifully read)

https://librivox.org/the-iron-heel-by-jack-london/ - 'A dystopian novel about the terrible oppressions of an American oligarchy at the beginning of the Twentieth Century, and the struggles of a socialist revolutionary movement.'

https://librivox.org/the-jungle-by-upton-sinclair/ - 'Sinclair wrote the novel to portray the harsh conditions and exploited lives of immigrants in the United States in Chicago and similar industrialized cities. However, most readers were more concerned with his exposure of health violations and unsanitary practices in the American meatpacking industry during the early 20th century, based on an investigation he did for a socialist newspaper.'

https://librivox.org/moving-the-mountain-by-charlotte-perkins-gilman/ - 'Moving the Mountain is a feminist utopian novel' 'first volume in Gilman's utopian trilogy; it was followed by the famous Herland (1915) and its sequel, With Her in Ourland (1916)'

Elizabeth Gaskell - https://librivox.org/author/410 - 'Often referred to simply as Mrs Gaskell, was a British novelist and short story writer during the Victorian era. Her novels offer a detailed portrait of the lives of many strata of society, including the very poor, and are of interest to social historians as well as lovers of literature.'

George Bernard Shaw - https://librivox.org/author/603 - 'Irish playwright, essayist, novelist and short story writer. Nearly all his writings address prevailing social problems, but have a vein of comedy which makes their stark themes more palatable.'

Oscar Wilde - https://librivox.org/author/114 - Fantastic and funny playwright and wit of the late nineteenth century, wrote many dramas tackling social issues and class.

https://librivox.org/siddhartha-by-hermann-hesse/ "Siddhartha is one of the great philosophical novels. Profoundly insightful, it is also a beautifully written story that begins as Siddhartha, son of an Indian Brahman, leaves his family and begins a lifelong journey towards Enlightenment. On the way he faces the entire range of human experience and emotion:"