This hydroponics box was custom developed to fit under the bar in Bitcoin Coffee at Paralelní Polis in Prague. This hydroponic box uses the drip irrigation principle. It serves as special design feature where vegetables can be grown for the purpose of the cafe, to study production process, to communicate the technology with the public, and to conduct workshops on growing in hydroponics. Thebox was designed in a way to be as compact as possible in order to avoid external solution reservoir, exposed wiring, etc. This project consists of two projects that form a compatible outcome product: hydroponics system itself, and IoT device that is being developed in order to collect data about the growing process, optimize costs, and eventually to take control over the system.
This initiative is a project related to the Enviro Meetup programme we are running in Paralelní Polis in Prague. Our activities are being live streamed through the facebook of Paralelní Polis https://www.facebook.com/vejdiven/ . Then they are being uploaded to youtube under following link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hhW6fsABNEE&list=PLGJQS0h-wqLQ6r8_6Ans_e26NkKsHYUh- We would love to enable the content for English speakers as well, and we would appreciate any initiative to help us with translation from Czech to English and subtitles addition into our videos.
Full documentation about this project may be found in the Github repository under following link: https://github.com/ParallelGarden/Hydroponics-in-a-box
NOTICE! We understand somebody might not be familiar with Github. If you would like to contribute to the development, but don't know how to do so, please feel free to send your suggestions via e-mail: jakub.hamata@gmail.com
-
Lights - We are overal interested in finding the perfect fit lights for our system to ipmrove the effectivity of the growing system. Crucial deliverables are: cost of the light, electricity consumption, and suitability. Current lights are full spectrum LED which is great for growing both leafy and fruit vegetables. However we need quite many of them due to the space limitation, and they are quite strong (causing little burning of edges of leaves). The angle of the light beam is quite narrow for the space.
-
Growing substrates - At the beginning we started with realiable substrates such as coconut fibre substrate, or rockwool cubes. We are interested in finding a substrate that can be produced locally, and is biodegradable. Coconut substrates are the last option as this material has to be imported from other parts of the world.
-
Fertilizers - We are looking for an organic fertilizer (or mix of organic fertilizers) to establish the production in bio quality. We are very limited by hygienic standards of the place as it is completely exposed. We must avoid any unpleasand smell or breeding of pests.
-
Technologies and processes - Please have a look at our datasheet regarding the cost of the production under following link https://github.com/ParallelGarden/Hydroponics-in-a-box/blob/master/datasheets/EconomicsOfTheProduction.pdf We will appreciate any contributions regarding the technology that can reduce production costs or tips to reduce the time consumption of the labour. In case of labour we would like to reduce time consumption on following operations: preparation of seedlings, and regular cleanup of the system.
Full documentation about this project may be found in the Github repository under following link:https://github.com/octopusengine/octopusLAB_parallel_garden
Collected database is accessible under following link:
Created by Jakub Hamata