Smart urban aquaponics in West Oakland

We recently took a close look at how an organic aquaponic farmer living in South Carolina uses custom-built sensors based on Arduino boards to monitor the delicate balance between water and soil.

Living in West Oakland, Eric Maundu may be quite a distance from the Carolinas, but he is also a farmer, albeit in a landscape covered with freeways, roads, light rail and parking lots. There isn’t much arable land in West Oakland and empty lots are often filled with contaminated soil. So Maundu, who is also trained in industrial robotics, has turned to smart aquaponics.

Specifically, Maundu employs Arduino-based sensors to monitor water levels, pH and temperature, along with social media networks like Twitter and Facebook to provide alerts and updates in real time.

“I feel knowledge of electronics and software programming makes me a better farmer than just having a hoe. Gardens that can communicate for themselves using the Internet can lead to exchanging of ideas in ways that were not possible before,” Maundu told FairCompanies.

“I can test, for instance, whether the same tomato grows better in Oakland or the Sahara Desert given the same conditions. Then I can share the same information with farmers in Iceland and China.”

Maundu also runs Kijani Grows (“Kijani” is Swahili for green), a small startup that designs and sells custom smart aquaponics systems for growing food. According to Maundu, putting gardens online in cities is the only way to ensure farming remains viable to future generations of urban youth.

“The next generation; honestly I don’t see them having access to traditional farms so we have to start arming them with technologies where they can go colonize places like in West Oakland that no one uses, rooftops,” he explained.

“We [also] want them to start thinking about them from when they’re kids so as they use their computers, as they use their phones as they write those little ‘Hello [World!]’ programs to know that I can write ‘Hello Garden’ programs, to know that hey, I’m using my device to create food for me.”

As previously discussed on Bits and Pieces, Atmel microcontrollers are the silicon of choice for the Arduino platform, both in their AVR flavor and ARM varieties. Clearly, Arduino is continuing to democratize hardware in a way that allows anyone – young or old, engineer or not, rich or poor – to design anything they can imagine.

DIY farming with Arduino and Atmel

Steve Spence – an organic aquaponic farmer living in South Carolina – uses pond water to irrigate his vegetables. Monitoring the delicate balance between water and soil is absolutely critical, and often requires real-time readings.

So Spence decided to build custom sensors based on Arduino boards to keep an eye on the water’s pH, temperature and ammonia levels – along with soil temperature, moisture
levels and barometric pressure.

Photo Credit: ModernFarmer.com

“From aquaponics to weather stations, farmers are starting to embrace the modern trends of DIY tech,” writes Caleb Garling of the Modern Farmer. “Arduino boards are creeping into amateur and professional agriculture to streamline and cheapen operations.”

Indeed, Spence is hardly alone in employing a DIY tech strategy for agriculture, amateur or otherwise. For example, Luke Iseman of San Francisco designed a “growerbot,” a sensor array that monitors a garden’s health and updates followers via Twitter. Meanwhile, Ben Shute, who runs Hearty Roots Community Farm, worked with a Boston-based engineer to build an Arduino-based sensor system dubbed “Fido” which sends text message whenever greenhouse temperatures hit dangerous thresholds. Inspired by the success of Fido, Shute founded Farm Hack in an effort to meld farming and engineering – with Arduino as a common denominator.

“Sharing data from DIY sensors can also add real value to the overall farming community,” notes Garling.

Photo Credit: Scott Bauer, Wikipedia

“Websites like OpenWeatherMap.org and HabitatMap.org have taken [this] on, dedicating themselves to aggregating information so farmers — or anyone for that matter — can drill down to the weather patterns for their tiny corner of the world for future planting and harvesting.”

As we’ve previously discussed on Bits and Pieces, the Maker Movement is steadily growing and making its mark on business, the economy and everyday life. The fundamentally social nature of the Maker space is inspiring individuals to launch innovative products easily and cheaply. In so doing, it is empowering a new generation of small/medium businesses and entrepreneurs – with Arduino capturing the hearts and minds of people all over the world.

Atmel microcontrollers are the chips of choice for the Arduino platform, both in their AVR flavor and ARM varieties. Clearly, Arduino has democratized hardware in a way that allows anyone – young or old, engineer or not, rich or poor – to design anything they can imagine. As Arduino’s founder, Massimo Banzi puts it, “You don’t need anyone’s permission to create something great.”