DRO-Matic
OS and Wiki found here
I've spent the past year learning everything I could about traditional and vertical hydroponic farming, such as:
- Nutrient dosing / drifting amounts over growth stages
- pH ranges / drifting and micro adjusting
- Full nutrient feedings vs. top off feedings
- Concentrate levels between feeding types
- EC or PPM ranges and what causes drifting
- Irrigation and light cycles
From here I learned a great deal about C++ and Arduinos, and began to quantify all the steps a system would need to build an automated hydroponics OS for farmers. After some time, I've finally finished building both the physical box and OS, while simultaneously capturing it all on youtube / github for others.
Build videos found here
My hope is that by both automating hydroponics, and open sourcing my project / OS others will build too, and more farmers will start to see vertical farming as simple, not hard. The more vertical farming we can do, the less actual land we use up for agriculture, and that is good for everyone!
One of the key features I wanted my project (and others who build) to have, was a way for people to share successful "crop" configuration online as a community. So I made the system be built around a micro SD card reader (required) for that exact reason, and plan to construct an online site where you can upload / download different food type configurations for everyone around the world to use.
There were countless times the Arduino forums really helped me get my code fixed up! In every instance when I actually sought help, not one person was rude or un-willing to listen. My experience here has been excellent so far, so I thank you all!