Personal Food Computer: A new device for controlled-environment agriculture
Name
PFC.pdf
Description
Main article
Size
3.37 MB
Format
Adobe PDF
Checksum (MD5)
74d2d9340535653c104e45e43ac10a03
Author(s)
Castelló Ferrer, Eduardo
Rye, Jake
Brander, Gordon
Savas, Tim
Chambers, Douglas
England, Hildreth
Harper, Caleb
Date Issued
June 19, 2017
Abstract
Due to their interdisciplinary nature, devices for controlled-environment agriculture have the possibility to turn into ideal tools not only to conduct research on plant phenology but also to create curricula in a wide range of disciplines. Controlled-environment devices are increasing their functionalities as well as improving their accessibility. Traditionally, building one of these devices from scratch implies knowledge in fields such as mechanical engineering, digital electronics, programming, and energy management. However, the requirements of an effective controlled-environment device for personal use brings new constraints and challenges. This paper presents the OpenAg Personal Food Computer (PFC); a low cost desktop size platform, which not only targets plant phenology researchers but also hobbyists, makers, and teachers from elementary to high-school levels (K-12). The PFC is completely open-source and it is intended to become a tool that can be used for collective data sharing and plant growth analysis. Thanks to its modular design, the PFC can be used in a large spectrum of activities.
Description
Accepted at the 2017 Future Technologies Conference (FTC)
Subjects
Controlled-environment agriculture; Agricultural Robotics; Educational Robotics; Decentralised Farming; Open-source Hardware; Open-source Software; Citizen science
MIT Department
Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Media Laboratory
Terms of Use
Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0
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