Building Concept 0

Diamantino Marques
Aug 27, 2017 · 5 min read

What is the first step to creating my revolutionary food machine? Starting small. That’s how Mate Rimac did it in becoming the leader in the hypercar electrification game, taking his lime green BWM E30 and turning it into an electric race car; later using the skill-sets he learned to prototype the vastly more ambitious first Concept_One car.

Mate’s electric E30
The first Concept_One hypercar prototype at the 2011 Frankfurt Motor Show

This is what I am doing with automated farms, learning the basics by building a semi-automated proof of concept, and then go onto make a polished automated farm concept to sell, in low volume, while receiving feedback. As of 5 days ago, I think I’ve achieved most of that first part. I have built my “electric E30” farming machine, my Concept 0.

Concept 0, a semi-automated farm:

Starting on a project, like always, means a lot of google searches; the basics of fluid physics, seed anatomy, how plants grow, what things they need to grow, and how to grow them indoors. I then started looking into the current state of the art; strawberry harvesting robots, hydroponic container farms, more hydroponic farms, aeroponic farms, and everything in between.

I thought the aeroponic- cloth solution to vertical-indoor farming presented by AeroFarms would be the most suitable platform to base my design on; a simple and efficient root misting technique not too dissimilar from NASA’s in 1998. I made some sketches and ,by early April, ordered all the parts I thought I needed from Chinese sellers on Ebay (pumps, nozzles, water filters, LED’s, a tank,etc.). Getting the cheapest parts available on the internet shipped from China, as it turns out, is not the speediest method of delivery, and so I only received the final parts by July.

With those parts ready, I began putting them together, buying all the PVC and brass fittings needed from the local Home Depot. As more of the farm began to take shape, my dad (the handiest man) built a back-plate and mount for the accumulator tank, the pump, and the peristaltic pump (for nutrient pumping).

The back-plate/ mount

At this point, I connected what I had to a long grey pipe with a capped end (where the mister nozzles would be attached), got it inside a steel tank (where the excess water would collect), and with the help of my dad again (thanks dad!) built a small supporting structure where the lights would hang.

Looking cozy now

Next was the lighting, mounting the LED’s on to an aluminum plate, using thermal paste on their backs (to conduct their heat), and then securing them further with hot glue. So far not so hard, but to figure out how to power them took another week. During this week I got a crash coarse in electronics and attempted to power them using a custom circuit. I couldn’t get that to work, and so I just ended up ordering some constant-current drivers from Amazon (2 day shipping on these, thank god).

Let there be light!

At this point, I was thrilled! Now I had light for my plants and a system for delivering water and nutrients, right? Well, there are always problems with prototypes, and my next problem was the T connecting the peristaltic pump to mix nutrients in to the flow. It had burst and in its place left a monstrous high pressure jet that reached all the way to the ceiling, getting water all over my electronics, work space and myself. I hadn’t designed my nutrient mixing properly. A simple T connecting the pump wasn’t going to do the job, so instead I purchased a check valve and put it between the pump and the T, making sure the flow was going only where I wanted.

The final mixing system

I now had all the bits figured out. To get it all working, I powered the solenoid and the peristaltic pump with NPN transistors and programmed them with arduino on a loop that turns on first the pump and then the valve every 20 minutes; fully mixing the nutrients with the water and delivering them to the plants on the cloth, and their roots. It was now finished.

In the end I think I’ve made a nice little farm. It’s got limited space and only a single level, but it’s currently growing kale quickly, and what it’s been able to teach me so far about farming and my prospects is invaluable.

Currently growing the very first batch of Kale!

Zero to One, what the future holds:

Achieving full automation in a farming machine would mean that all seeding, growing, and harvesting would be done via the machine. With Concept 0, that’s not the case, while all growing is automated, the other two parts aren’t (yet); therefore semi. Concept One, on the other hand, will feature automated seed setting and harvesting, along with a whole slew of smart features and design that will make it an incredibly compelling device for the costumers we hope to work with. Here’s a plausible feature list for Concept One:

  • Capable of growing Arugula, Kale, Pac Choi, lettuce, Watercress, and more greens
  • Seed planting using motorized shakers
  • 5 farm layers of 60 x 120 cm each
  • Full layer harvests every 3 days in baby greens setting
  • Fuller leaves setting at 1.5 times longer
  • Automatic pH control
  • Air ventilation
  • Excess nutrient/water re-circulation cycle
  • Mechanical harvest of layers using cutters and pushers for roots and plants
  • Light-up indicators for each level when harvest is done
  • Collection compartments in front panel for easy pickup of harvest
  • Have the farm owner’s only work in running the farm be to change nutrient+seeds cartridges every harvest

Originally published at Organico.

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    Diamantino Marques

    Written by

    Organicoaf.com

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