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Comment by Animats | Hacker News Reader

Farmers would call this a "greenhouse". Here's one commercial greenhouse control system.[1] There are lots of greenhouse control systems. The fancier ones control water, fertilizer, temperature, humidity, oxygen content, CO2 content, lighting, etc. Some vegetables, such as lettuce, can be overclocked, with a short day/night cycle.

This stuff isn't new, although the controllers are getting smaller.

[1] http://www.climatecontrol.com/

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Haven't you learned? We just give things new names and people are amazed.

Statistics and vacation rentals aren't new. But when you call it "data science" and "sharing economy", it sounds cool.

It's a "3D printer for food"!

https://www.cayneshousewares.com/skin1/images/Products/34533...

Are any of them built on open source software and open hardware ? I think that's part of the big idea here.

One could, eschew software, and handle the requirements and growing manually. It's actually pretty rewarding when you have the time and space.

This strikes me as a non sequitur. If I wanted to eschew software, I wouldn't be reading about building a "personal food computer."

https://www.reddit.com/r/SpaceBuckets/ A community of 20,000 DIY indoor gardeners.

Subset from the SpaceBucket manifesto:

Humans of the Earth! Hear the Space Buckets calling. It is time for a DIY indoor gardening revolution. We stand at the vanguard:

    I. Bucket culture is open. We are a community of learners, a movement of tinkerers. Our goal is to spread information about how to grow plants inside small containers with artificial lighting. Anyone can join us.

    II. Bucket knowledge is free. We believe in the free flow of ideas and the unparalleled power of the Internet. We are part of the web, and we contribute to it. Profit is not our motivation, innovation is.

Also found these:

[1] http://hmeter.sourceforge.net/

[2] https://www.3dponics.com/ ( a 10,000 person community )

[3] http://yieldbuddy.com/ An open source automation system for hydroponics

[4] http://www.powerhousehydroponics.com/crash-course-open-sourc...

[5] http://scienceinhydroponics.com/2013/02/the-first-free-hydro...

Are any of them built on open source software and open hardware ?

Yes: http://opensourceecology.org/wiki/Aquaponic_Greenhouse_Works...

Farm Hack is another community of farmers collaborating to create Open Source tools for Ag. http://farmhack.org

> Some vegetables, such as lettuce, can be overclocked, with a short day/night cycle.

Do you know what this is called?

Traditionally (19th century British literature) any such technique was called "forcing" if it simulated an environment more favorable to growth. Techniques include light cycle variation (covering the plant with an opaque cover at specific time was the standard approach), thermal environment manipulation (using horse dung to generate heat from below, or glass cover to trap heat above), CO2 manipulation by breathing in the space the plants are, or using bacteria that produce CO2, varying the timing, location and temperature of water, etc etc etc

Here's a photo of people harvesting forced rhubarb. Someone said this was in Cheltenham (Gloucestershire, which is south west England) in 1937.

http://imgur.com/B8iqwAh

I don't know anything about this photo. There's a lot of information that's been lost - I don't think anyone knows who the people are, or where this was taken, or when it was taken. Maybe the information is in some archive somewhere and it just hasn't been digitised yet. It does make me wonder what the future people will call this time - the time where we have photographs and film and audio, but it hasn't been digitised and is hard to search.

So we don't know why this women is wearing nice shoes while picking rhubarb - did she just not care? is this a special occasion photo op?

Sure - a lot of things aren't digitalized, but that doesn't mean it's lost - yet. A lot of it still exist in physical and analogue form - in archives, collections and private as well as public libraries across the globe.

There are however some quantity of people who equal "not being digitalized" as "being lost" (I'm not saying you're one of them). That would however not be true, at least not yet.

That said, there are people who have an over-confidence in technology or digitalization, which think we should forgo our analogue copies of any or everything. Some people use the argument that "Everything of value, has been digitalized". (Not everyone is a curator... tho)

I'd be interested to see the difference in nutritional content (macro- and micronutrients) in over clocked lettuce vs regular, and other similarly hacked foods.

If you were to find significant variation (e.g. lower nutrient quantity/quality when using overclocked growing methods), it would be interesting to see if you can pull the needle in the opposite direction, e.g. "underclocking" to try to create more nutrient-dense variants.

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