Pipefarm

A great combination between hardware and software.

THE INDOOR VERTICAL FARM - Hardware

The farm itself will be small and portable. The main idea behind it is that you can hang it up easily, everywhere. In this way, you don’t have to dedicate a portion of your house to the farm.

The farm is equipped with various sensors (moisture, illumination, temperature) which will measure every aspact of it to make sure you can care for it in the right way. An analytics dashboard keeps you up to date with what’s happening with the farm.

THE PLATFORM - Software

Next to the farm itself, people will need to know what to do. And of course, they would want to share what they’re doing with everyone else. This is why I will build a platform to which you can connect your own farm and get information on how your farming journey is going. The platform provides comprehensive tutorials for all experience levels. And next to that farmers on the platform can exchange knowledge and share their beloved farms!

THE FIRST PROTOTYPE

My first prototype consists of an Arduino powering a water pump and a moisture sensor. The is a big pvc pipe stuffed with stone wool. This is where the plants should grow. At the top, a water reservoir is located with a pump inside it to pump around the water. Also inside of the stone wool there is a moisture sensor sensing the moisture of the farm.

This moisture data is posted to an API hosted on my server. There I read out the data and visually show it on a webpage.

On that page is a button with which you can water the farm. Pump state data is being pushed to the API which the Arduino reads out.

Bear in mind, this is the first prototype.