#farm tech

[randominteresting]

Harvesting Brussel sprouts

[smartaireviewer]

Boost your smart farm's profitability! Learn about 34 critical, often overlooked factors impacting ROI in vertical farming and IoT agriculture. Get expert insights now.

[generalstrikefarm]

Increasing the Power Production of Vertical-Axis Wind-Turbine Farms Using Synergistic Clustering - Boundary-Layer Meteorology

Vertical-axis wind turbines (VAWTs) are being reconsidered as a complementary technology to the more widely used horizontal-axis wind turbin

Permanent magnet eddy current heater (PMECH) test setup²⁹

Download scientific diagram | Permanent magnet eddy current heater (PMECH) test setup²⁹ from publication: Direct heat energy harvesting from

Here's the sort of thing I've been immersing myself in lately. In this case the goal is not to generate electricity, though, but rather for directly heating water through magnetic induction. For our purposes it's far more efficient to do it that way.

We get a lot more wind coming through our land in winter and spring, when we need heat in our greenhouses the most. It is far more efficient to just convert mechanical energy into heat itself instead of going through all of the energy-losing steps of doing so the conventional off-grid way (motion>electricity>electricity storage>electrical inverter>electric heater). That wind also shifts direction by nearly 90° both frequently and suddenly, making a VAWT much more appropriate for this purpose. The plan is to make something like this that is driven by wind power instead of an electric motor.

The plan will be to use wind powered eddy current heaters to heat water that will circulate through pipes and tanks in and under our greenhouses. This, supplemented by electric heating elements on microhydro from the seasonal rain surge, should be enough to keep them at least warm enough to overwinter our most sensitive plants.

[zenythe]

Farm in a box produces an acre's worth of crops in a shipping container

Along with "exponentially higher" yields, the CropBox promises that their complete growing system also uses 90% less water and 80% less fertilizer than conventional agriculture does.

"Monitor and adjust every element of the growing system from a tablet or smartphone, including lighting, CO2, Nutrients, PH, Air Temperature, Flood, Fires, Humidity, Fans, Water Temperature, Water Flow, Water Levels and Root Zone Temperature. Includes a Webcam, so you may view your crops from anywhere in the world." - CropBox

[verticaltheory]

PlantVillage is essentially a giant Q&A forum for folks around the world to pose questions about their farming, from tiny backyard gardens to sprawling large-scale agriculture. Snap a photo of your problem plant, upload it, and get an answer from either a botanist or an ordinary gardener who’s been through the same problem before.

Read the full article on Wired.com

[thisisaworkofart]

[modfarm]

Will farmers be the next big buyers for aerial drones?

At Wired's Danger Room, Spencer Ackerman outlines one of the biggest growth markets for robotics: agriculture. 

[F}or Chris Mailey, a vice president with the drone promotion organization known as AUVSI, the cop shops represent short money. “Agriculture,” Mailey tells Danger Room, “is gonna be the big market.”

To Mailey, it’s a question of where the growth opportunities are. Military drone purchases are plateauing, even as the drones become increasingly central to U.S. counterterrorism. And there are limits, financial and otherwise, to the ability of police departments to purchase drones. Farming looks like a drone market with both fewer impediments and bigger incentives for early technological adoption.

“A manned crop sprayer is flying 10 feet above his crops — how accurate is it? Any crop you spray that isn’t on your farm you have to pay for, and a remote-controlled ‘copter can be very precise,” Mailey says. “Spraying, watering — there’s a whole market for precision agriculture, and when you put that cost-benefit together, farmers will buy [drones].”

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(Image: timtak/CC 2.0)