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Show HN: Grow your own with the Raspberry Pi

github.com

123 pointsalexellisuk27 comments

Meta: I think the title would work better if it said "your own food".

That was a very confusing title, especially considering that I dug up some wild raspberry bushes this morning, to plant upon my balcony!

As a non-native english speaker, I first confused the title with the expression "grow a pair". I wondered how a Pi would help in that case.

Maybe it could monitor testosterone levels and inject you with some when low.

I thought exogenous testosterone had the opposite effect?

As a native english speaker, I assumed it was about weed, so it's confusing to all.

I did as well, for what it's worth.

Yeah I was confused by this title last time (this post seems to be a repeat from a week or two ago)

Edit: seems that the link is different from last time. The GitHub README that this links to gives a much better introduction to this project than the previously linked website [0] does (in terms of quickly understanding what it is).

Plus it looks like a really great project.

[0] https://growlab.dev

It's a very common phrase in the UK: "Grow your own" means food. But I can get that updated for our international speakers.

Thanks for commenting.

https://github.com/alexellis/growlab.dev/commit/a349972b977b...

For context: GYO & GIY (Grow Your Own / Grow It Yourself) are common acronyms in permaculture/biodiversity/grower circles.

But yeah, probably not widely recognised. Worth clarifying.

Hah! I assumed it meant grow your own weed

This is amazing! So excited a community like this exists. I started doing something similar last year. Here’s my progress:

https://bartlomiejmika.com/post/2021/red-mulberry-growlog-2/

And here are the open source libraries I’ve written to support it:

- https://github.com/bartmika/sparkfunweathershield-arduino - https://github.com/bartmika/tstorage-server - https://github.com/bartmika/tpoller-server https://github.com/bartmika/treader-server - more to come...

I hope to submit in the future!

We have 28 people participating now, with live-previews, lots of Twitter activity and prizes to give away for folks who complete the various parts of the challenge.

The code is open source and includes a data logger and Grafana dashboard that's fun to use even if you are not growing things.

My wife and I founded Open Agriculture Supply (www.openagriculturesupply.com) years ago to support the mit open agriculture initiative that ultimately fizzled out. We'd love to support in any way you need!

Thanks Ian, do you want to get in touch via email? alex@openfaas.com?

I love stuff like this. I recently[0] put some raspberry pis and beaglebones to work monitoring my plants (though my own solution is not as smooth as this, and I didn't opt for photo capability).

My robogardeners alert me via push notification on my phone when e.g. my basil needs watering, and I can issue them commands to set water/dryness thresholds via IRC.

[0] https://0x85.org/raspi.html

Funny story - I recently bought a Gardyn[1] but they didn’t have an open API, so while reversing it discovered that under the hood it’s just… a raspberry pi haha

It’s a fantastic device tbh, but I LOL’d

[1] https://mygardyn.com

Fancy trying out one of the experiments we have listed? Like the data logger or live preview?

Actually, it would be fun to try and pull data off the device. I’ll play with it tomorrow!

Super excited to see more Pi powered growing. IME It works great for medium scale operations. One of my next objectives is a community sized greenhouse for veg, and a bunch of Pi automation.

>growlab

I think they're called gardens.

Once you add a camera to it, it's called a lab.

Not clear if one needs to buy >your< kit, or any kit.

We have _no kit_ for sale, so it's clearly any kit :-)

We do have open source code available for you to use for free, and three varied experiments you can take part in. Feel free to browse the code and README

No one ever really needs to buy >a< kit.

is a raspberry zero?

Sure, you can use a Raspberry Pi Zero. That's part of the build instructions in the repo

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