LED Lettuce The HydroTower And LED Humboldt Hydroponics

Tonights blog post has two tales of LED grow lights and the planting of a seed for a future collaborative project in the Humboldt Microcontrollers Group.

LED lettuce (from Wired.com)

On July 11, Wired had an article titled, "LED-lit indoor farm produces 10,000 lettuces a day." Because several members of the Humboldt Microcontrollers Group have expressed an interest in using microcontrollers (MCUs) for automated or indoor plant growing, the LED lettuce article caught my interest. The Wired article presents some pretty impressive statistics.

"A newly opened indoor farm in Japan has been built with LEDs that emit light at wavelengths optimal for plant growth...Its 2,300 square metres, making it the worlds largest LED-illuminated indoor farm, and is already producing 10,000 heads of lettuce per day. The LED lamps allow Shimamura to adjust the day-night cycle for the plants, allowing them to photosynthesise during the day and respire at night. Discarded produce is cut from 50 percent of the harvest on a conventional farm to ten percent, and the lettuces grow two and a half time faster...stringent climate control means that water usage is just one percent of the amount needed by outdoor fields."

I can understand that the indoor growing and carefully controlled ambient conditions would reduce the amount of water to grow plants compared to outdoors. But it seems a real stretch to believe that the LED lettuce farm only uses 1% of what would be used for an outdoor lettuce farm!

Calvin students HydroTower workshop area

The second LED grow light project took place in my hometown -- Grand Rapids, Michigan. That project was the HydroTower, the senior design project for a group of Calvin College students. The HydroTower was a fully automated hydroponic garden for home use, using an MCU for control and LED lights to enable photosynthesis and plant growth. This MCU / LED grow project popped up in a Google search after I read the LED lettuce article. Since the HydroTower happened in Grand Rapids, it seemed appropriate to find out a little more. The Calvin College alumni magazine Spark says this about the HydroTower:

"In October, the team researched hydroponics, learning about the floating, misting, and flood-and-drain (ebb-and-flow) methods of growing...their HydroTower would be constructed of a 20-by-32-by-32 inch base unit, to house the electronics and plumbing, and two open growing levels, each measuring 24 by 32 by 32 inches. The unit would operate on an ebb-and-flow system, and it would irrigate the plants and dispense nutrients automatically...In November, Team HydroTower broke the project into components, and each student engineer took one. DeKock would construct the

HydroTower is finished

tower. Kirkman would engineer the water and piping. Vonk would create the LED system, using only red and blue lights because those are the only colors of the spectrum that plants absorb. Meyer would program the microcontroller that controls the LED lighting, the pump and valves, and the touch-screen user interface. And Eelkema would create the pH and electroconductivity sensors that handle nutrient control—a system, the team emphasized, that sets HydroTower apart from other hydroponic farms. “The sensors would input into a microcontroller, which would then use algorithms to decide which nutrients need to be replenished,” Eelkema explained. “The only problem with that is the biology and chemistry research is far more advanced than we have time to cover. Right now I am shooting for a best guess that I know won’t kill the plants."

The Calvin College students project website gives this final update on the project:

"All through April and the first week of May Team HydroTower worked...to finish the prototype. The month of April saw the addition of our second growing level and some new plants. Other major accomplishments made before Design Night were completion of the pH and EC sensors, a working User Interface on the touchscreen...On May 7th the Engineering department held their annual Senior Design Open House where the team answered questions and took comments about the HydroTower. Later that evening the team gave a presentation detailing some of the work and challenges they faced during the past year...HydroTower is a finalist in the IEEE Presidents Change the World Competition. The project has been selected as one of 15 finalist entries and the top three winners will be announced at the end of May."

Humboldt Laser Harp v.1.0 nearly finished

It seems like the first collaborative project from the Humboldt Microcontrollers Group, the Humboldt Laser Harp v.1.0 (HLH), is well under way. Ed Smith said today that the HLH was being played by his kids in his kitchen. We will no doubt be working on improvements to HLH v.1.0, and at some point will start planning for v.2.0.

But this seems like a good time to plant a seed for another MCU group project. And a project involving some type of hydroponics and LEDs seems like a good target. Ill be reaching out to a few people to see if they want to work on that kind of a project. If youre interested in being involved with an MCU / LED garden project, contact me at arcatabob (at) gmail {dott} com.

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Humboldt Makers Group At Eureka Craft Fair

The Humboldt Makers Group had a tech demo and information table today at the Humboldt Makers Street Fair, an arts and craft fair in Eureka, California.

The arts and craft street fair was organized by Origin Design Lab from Eureka, and it was the 4th annual fair for them. Several blocks of 2nd Street in the Old Town section of Eureka hosted arts and crafts booths and a variety of local musicians. The Humboldt Makers Group had a table there to raise the visibility of the group in the local community and to encourage participation in the Humboldt Makers monthly meetings from 6 to 8 PM at 1385 8th Street in Arcata. We also had the brand new Humboldt Laser Harp (HLH) on the table to amaze and entertain passersby.

Although most of the public walking around to the different booths and tables appeared to be tourists or shoppers looking at the arts and crafts for sale, rather than makers, it was worthwhile for us to have a table at the event. We did talk with a few people who seemed interested enough in the maker group to come to future monthly meetings. These interested people ranged from young students who wanted to learn about electronics but didnt have much money or drivers license to people who took a smartphone picture of the Humboldt Makers Group sign and said they wanted to come to meetings to people who seemed interested in the makers but didnt appear committed to getting involved with the group.

Having these people stop by the table to talk with us simply reinforced what Ive found to be true in many places. Every maker event and tech unconference Ive participated in over the past ten years has involved talking with people at the event who say they just heard about the event (which was of high interest to them) the day before, or they ask how long weve been around and why its so hard to find out about us, or they tell me they were sure there were no other people like them (a maker or a tech enthusiast) in the area because they sure didnt know of any. Im firmly convinced that a combination of three things can greatly strengthen and expand the community of makers or tech enthusiasts in an area.

1. Establishing regular in-person events for either the maker community or the tech enthusiast community.
2. Organizing and facilitating event activities which are of interest to the people who show up and participate in the event.
3. Extensively promoting, communicating and marketing the events and the groups behind the events so that as many potentially-interested people as possible find out about them. A big part of this involves personal invitations to people to participate in an event.

Maker Faire -- Bay Area, CA

No one I talked to at todays event knew what the maker movement is and only a couple had heard of the Maker Faire in the Bay area. This was partly because people at todays event were there for an arts and craft street fair. But the lack of awareness also shows a need for more promotion and education about makers and Maker Faire. A dedicated core group of people can greatly raise the visibility in Humboldt County of the maker movement, but we one or two new people in the group who are good at marketing and promotion, and we need sponsors that enable us to effectively promote the Humboldt Makers Group.

First public display of Humboldt Laser Harp

The HLH demo went fairly well, especially considering that physical construction of the harp was started last week, and it first became playable yesterday. Having an outdoor, midday venue to demo it also presented challenges, especially in terms of the changing sunlight affecting the light sensors and their correct calibration. Concerns about burning out the dollar store lasers used in the HLH caused us to periodically power down the lasers to try and make them last longer. Powering down the lasers creates an interesting phenomenon. Within ~ two minutes of powering down the lasers, someone would come to our table and ask "Whats the Humboldt Laser Harp?" Which, of course, meant we had to power them back up! It was worth it though, because it was fun to watch them play the harp and be amazed at how it works. A robust and versatile harp will be an excellent promotional tool for the Humboldt Makers Group and should be displayed to the general public as much as possible. 

Ed Smith and I thought of quite a few improvements wed like to make on the Grip-Strut version of the HLH. Ed is much more familiar with both the hardware and software of the HLH than am I, so Ill let him explain to Nick and others what will be most effective at improving the HLH. However, below is my understanding of HLH stuff we should figure out and work on.

1. Reduce ambient light reaching the light sensors.
2. Improve alignment of lasers.
3. Modify software so the twelve lasers can all be calibrated to have the same sensitivity or span or whatever the correct term is.
4. Find better quality, but still reasonable cost, lasers to replace the dollar store lasers.
5. Make a dark enclosure for the HLH to reduce daylight hitting light sensors and to make laser beams (more) visible outdoors during daytime demos.
6. Equip the HLH with LEDs that are influenced by the music or breaking of the laser beams.
7. Add hardware and software that gives improved musical capabilities to the HLH.
8. Consider building two small laser harps for display with the HLH so three people can experiment with laser beam music at the same time during public demos.

Well probably have the HLH at next weeks Humboldt Microcontrollers Group meeting on Thursday. So if you want to see it in action (and hear it in action), or if you want to contribute in some way to the HLH group project, consider participating in this Thursdays meeting.

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