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And now the cork
plans machines that
it started.
So thank you very much.
We are very, very honored to be here.
Um,
this is as to from the plants
and the machines project and create
a fresh image of us doing field
research.
By now we are four people.
We have a friend who has done
programing and
another one who supports us with
other critical issues.
But it's actually this garden
now where everything started out
about one year ago, a little
bit more, and it was
an equally dark and very, very
sad and cold night when when we came up
with this question that, um, how
is it that everything in nature at
this in this hemisphere sucks so badly
at being green?
And so we
thought, like, OK, there are some
solutions somewhere.
Six hundred Watts and others are
producing red blue light,
which makes plants look sick
from the beginning.
And we thought we could solve this
problem. And so we
made a little rendering and
this is really nice.
It was planned to be one
cubic meter for
our little garden.
And yeah,
we plant everything from two
water tanks for the waste water
and the fresh water and where the water
should go in the middle.
We plan for a pump.
So we were almost done and we made a
product designer who said this shape
is so expensive you can CESCO
file bankruptcy.
So we wouldn't
do it anyway. But but then there was
this nice little party and there were
these boxes.
And with a little bit of social
engineering and and building
the lightning, we eventually
ended up with one of those very beautiful
boxes.
Um,
so, um, that day we
adapted our plan a little bit
and we wouldn't all have fancy doors
to open and close the garden.
And we we
said immediately to to have this plan
because it was fully, fully
working. You see, we have a black and we
have Chines and and
even even a little plan
for what we wanted to do with electricity
and computing.
So we
put it into work and we asked the guy
from the machine that, um, whether we
could do it at this place and therefore
said, like, OK, this is a very old
building. It's like one thousand liters
of water you want to play with.
And, um,
basically we have all our technique
here and and you are not welcome.
So, uh, we had to find a new
place and this
place was actually a garage.
And there it didn't matter if we spilled
tons of water or, you know, burned some
fuzes nobody would yell at us.
We could pretty much do whatever we want
to. And
the plan was to to fit the tank through
this store you see in the picture, which
didn't quite fit.
We made it fit eventually.
But, you know, we thought, you know, if
you can't expect from anyone to
Hachita first before checking your
garden.
So we thought, you know, maybe
we should scale it down a little bit
more, maybe should make it a little
smaller and, um.
Yeah.
But then about a year ago,
I think it was the 24th of December,
we went shopping and we got ourselves
some heaters for the garage and some
of the first boxes we use for Prototyp
or for proof of concept.
And of course, we bought some
Christmas trees for girls.
So this is basically it.
This is the first prototype or the proof
of concept. And it consists of a water
reservoir down here, the Grobet
up here and a top case
covering it all.
And one thing we did was
to put fish inside the water
reservoir to make it an aquaponics
system. This way,
microorganisms living inside the GROBET
can generate or can
convert toxic substances
from the water to
nitrate to actually fertilize
your plants. So, you know,
with this kind of system, you would
not have to balance
fertilizer or nutrients inside your
system pretty much runs on its own.
The system, the aquaponics system
is contains the Waterkloof.
There's no water loss in this kind of
systems except that
due to evaporation.
So the water gets pumped up from the fish
tank up to the Grobet.
The micro organisms living there take
care of that toxic substances,
convert it to nitrate plants, take up the
nitrates and return the clear
clean water down to the bottom to the
fish tank.
This is pretty much our hot water stack
for our first prototype.
You can see here an order that is
connected to one sensor
we had at this time a temperature and
humidity sensor for above
the GROBET and then
connected to
some relay boards that are
switching a pump heater,
a bubbler or aerator.
And the light,
the orange is then pretty much
or could be considered autonomous
nervous system of your garden
because it acts on its own.
And the rest very pie is the
brain of the system where you lock
all your all things that are happening,
happening in your garden in a database.
And the recipe also
gives you an interface to control
several settings of your garden.
One little problem we had to solve was
we need to we need to make the Arduino
aware of time because we had some
time, essential or time critical events
like switching lights on and off or
like the flood cycle for the system.
And you could have just put a clock
inside the Arduino, but we decided
we would make this with software
interrupts where you actually use the
micro processor of the Arduino
with its full beautiful sixteen megahertz
to count up to a specific number
that is that defines a
certain time in the
or in your system.
And so when, when this number is reached,
so time I compare Vector
gets called and triggers
your functions.
So we were done with with our first
proof of concept and we thought this
could be could really be
a robot you have at home and
and it's it's actually was really
going very well.
What we crew inside,
we threw a lot of energy at the system.
That's true. But, um, therefore,
we got a lot of green.
And one problem
with our our approach,
because we wanted it to be easy.
And it was
if you if you look at the
thing, the opening, this was the
biggest opening you would get if you
would be one person.
So it was very, very wonderful for the
teamwork because always one person would
have to hold it up and the other person
would do the gardening.
And then we switch
take turns.
But eventually we really
produce nice things.
And and now
a few months ago, like real
innovation takes time, we figured
that with one zip tie you could just flip
up the top and
do this all alone.
So we are quite happy with the system
and it really worked, but we had to do
nothing.
So yeah, we started
with Kaiser, then we grew tomatoes and
radish and all this stuff and
was cute.
But then we thought, like, we can do this
much better with more technique,
we can solve more problems.
And so we came
up with this plan of of putting
the pot back into Tenex and
making.
And make it really complex.
So by not sticking it on top of
each other, but by
virtualizing the set up and
giving the water reservoir its own
Arduino and the plant
part its on, how do you know?
The thing is you can with one such
a water reservoir, you can in theory
nourish many of those little
plant boxes.
And we wanted to see this happen,
but before
we wanted to put lots of lots of
technique inside and we wanted basically
to have a in the top as you can see,
that would measure the distance to the
plants and then adjust.
And so
running the system fed really like
printing food.
Um, so it slowly got
up very, very slowly.
We were not there when it happened,
but yes.
So but the wreck had to be an engineered
and we started to experiment
with LSD and and
and start making machines that we put
like really lots of ventilation systems
inside. And and as
you can see, on the right hand side,
there's the distance sensor and then
there's a light and humidity sensor and
so on.
But if you if you
really want to engineer a cute garden,
you don't want your plans to miss out on
the kitsch of nature.
And that's why
we even added a humidifier and said,
fuck it, this
is really going to be
pretty. It turned out this humidifier
was way too much for our cables.
It burned everything, but
it was pretty full.
And yeah,
we made huge, huge, huge progress because
from this system, we never had to
work together to feed our fish, which
we were still doing every day by hand
and sensor, because,
yeah, we wanted to find out more.
And there's so many, many
little places where you can tweak your
system, like with the amount of oxygen
you can make your fish fitter
or the less actually
eaten. They swim higher and.
But but we were always really,
really aware of of giving them high
quality life and making it really nice
for them. We gave them existential
experiences and.
So
one thing, one thing when designing such
a system is you have to make
sure everything is water and airtight,
but because like
the standard or a normal connector
sockets you would use to attach those
solenoid valves, for example, are
made out of metal or
made out of metal. That is not stainless
steel.
You know, there's there's some danger
that you get toxic substances inside
your system that will harm your fish,
your microorganisms, your plants.
And unfortunately or
could even harm you when when you eat the
fish or the plants later on.
So, you know, one solution when something
is not watertight would be to just
drown it in epoxy, which we
did here.
Of course, this is water tight
now or this was water tight.
But if you run into a problem and it had
to had to switch some
hot water, you would you would
have corpses laying around in your system
because this middle one is cut
out. It's not functioning anymore.
And of course, when we said we wanted
to make this a full blown system and
wanted to make it really cool and pretty
and put lots of sensors and actors
in there, we didn't realize that it
eventually in the end would look
something like this would be a rather
complex system in the end.
And this is
the data that gets in from the to
the recipe just from
from the one grobet you
you you've seen.
And in this picture.
Yeah. As we said before, modularity or
accessibility was really important
because you don't want to people when
you're gardening. So we had to make every
connection like pluggable like this.
We used ATCs and USB connectors
and Molex connectors to
wire up our sensors and actors and
to be able to to take off
the top. Very easy.
But still there's lots of cables
and we actually had to use separate
box just for the power supplies.
We had four different power suppliers
because, you know, she
started building things you don't know.
Do you get the experience and the next
time you do it right. But at this point
in time, we had a lot of power supply
units.
Yeah, so this was it was
not so elegant, um, as we
mentioned, but, um,
on the other hand, was a very, very
expensive and we thought, like, this is
not really what we want.
And if we want people to to help
us, um, we will not
go this way. So we thought about what
we did and we thought they were really
nice things we had in the one and in the
other system. And we said the first
one was was much nicer to Hackworth,
because even if your code fails, um,
you could not really spell water
somewhere. I'll get in contact with
electricity. So we thought we would keep
their modularity of the second one.
Um, but, um, keep the
set up of the first one.
And I'm afraid this, um,
and it would look like this, it was much
bigger, much, much bigger.
So it's actually like this size, um,
right here.
And so we took a few tubes
and used um I don't know,
gardening.
Um Dacus
um
five for making the boxes
airtight and fit on top of each other.
But why body is still being handled.
And we also invented the top
in Molex, the double Molex, um,
stickers. I don't know, um,
this is what is going to haunt me.
Um, and we were really
happy when when we came up with with
um and eventually
with this enormous but
um, it had an off switch
which was very, very handbill
and otherwise it was very simple,
but it worked very well with, um,
with the chili we had planted before.
Um, so we have
improving pictures for the happiness of
the fish.
Um, we
switched them for bigger ones.
That was actually an accident.
But the guy in the shop said they are
extra dirty.
So we thought that's a good thing.
And
uh, and yeah, actually
we have extra Chileno.
Um, and
then there was this message that hit us.
Um, we basically
never expect expected to come up here.
Um, and
that was the moment when we got really
nervous and
and thought like, OK, let's let's try
it again and make it really beautiful and
perhaps get some help from other people
too. Um, so
we started a kitching process
where we wanted to break down everything
onto one biotech, which
more or less worked well.
But um, because we've
had so many warranties on the way are um
we thought like we never really liked
the water heaters because they have
inherent safety and
that is less control for us.
And so we we started
to design our own heating
things for.
Which we would fill up with really lots
of, um, silicon,
which was very expensive and and
not food itself either.
So we thought we had to do it again.
And would you like.
Yeah. So we've done it again.
And we we pretty much stuck to the
basic design of a heating element, which
is resistive wire wrapped around a
steel coil or metal coil.
And we put it into an aluminum pipe.
We sealed it off with Sukru at the end
and then put it into a Plexiglas pipe,
which are then
kept by by wooden caps.
Yeah. And works quite nice.
One thing we had to solve though was or
still had to solve though was the feeding
process of the fish because
well we were still feeding our fish every
day.
And unless we forgot this one
and we made a really nice rendering of a
fish feeder and we thought about printing
it out and rapid prototyping
it. But when we calculated the cost for
this, we we
said it was another.
But so we decided
to just do it in one
day, do it with a small little
box as a reservoir for the food,
have a little motor on the outside of the
box, which has or is connected to
to a rod that rotates,
takes away some food and puts it
into into the fish tank.
So in this but we have
automated feeding now
and of course the wiring too is a lot
more organized. We used
twenty four pin
cables all the way.
Everything is connected up to there and
the hardware stacks at the same as in the
prototype before.
It's a little bit more complex.
We're working on sorting things
out right now.
We're actually trying to design a
Raspberry Pi board to
to get rid
of the Arduino and we're implementing
a bus system for our sensor.
So, yeah,
but still so
we are very used to adapting
rapidly.
We wanted to give you a demo,
but somehow we have issues.
Um, it's good that we are late.
Oh, we don't have issues anymore.
So, um, so this was the moment
when we thought we need help and we adapt
again.
And we found a friend
who is basically in gaming and gaming
and gaming and and he loves interfaces
and he really takes time to make code
look nice and
work stick.
And so, so we try to corrupt
him because we are poor students.
And they thought like, OK, perhaps
if we say he gets this, but, um, he would
help us develop a really, really nice
interface. So, um,
ask him up here and give
us give you a little demo if he's in the
room. Yeah. OK.
How does it work. You know.
Hello.
Hello. I'm DAX the guy
and this is my boss
and yeah
the guy said something about technical
difficulties. I just fixed them right
there and now switching to
the browser.
Hopefully it's
OK with the escape button.
This is a Mac.
I don't have Mac.
Yeah. So yeah.
So OK.
Like, I'm just screening the
morning for you.
OK, I can do the demo for myself.
Oh, this is probably
a.
This button, I guess you should be
go for it. Yes.
OK, so now
I have the skin down there.
All right. So
the first things I got asked from the
guys when they came to me was,
how can we make this free boxes,
something you can love, something
you really want to have as your garden.
And for this, we somehow needed
a face for this thing.
So. And as I'm still a programmer
and not a designer,
I made an ASCII face,
which is now, for now, the face of the
bot. And what we learned so far
is what I learned
when I did some animation was
that if you have a face,
you need to make it blink.
Otherwise it's no face.
So the first thing I did was right and
ask keyboard class, which
has nothing to do with the bot at all,
but it makes a nice face
and it should if everything works.
So at some point this
is the bot does its own app
for now, so it runs in
backup mode and makes us
a little small tiny face.
Huh.
And the very thing, the first thing it
asks you, what's your name?
What's my name.
So you can name it then
name yourself as the guy who built
it and then later on
it. It's meant to guide
you through this set up process to
actually build the bot from the
Arduino and what you've got for now.
For now, we have this and
the prototype interface.
So I'm switching back to the prototype
interface. You didn't blink.
It didn't say, oh, well,
it will blink hopefully here.
Oh, no, I can
come on in.
Nice.
OK, this is this
and this is another iteration
of the thing when I was just working for
it and this is the interface we have now,
usually there's a webcam picture.
Yes, a webcam picture where you can see
what the camera's picking up and pointing
down.
And then
we have posted a manual override because
it just started up and you don't want
it start spewing food out or
whatever.
So that's
how we do this stuff. Is this this is
we have to set a pointer.
So for now, we have the plant,
which you can see here.
For now we have the capsicum Chinese,
which is actually inside the boat.
You then
can set reference values
for each of the
things which will hopefully update the
photograph.
So, for example, this capsicum,
Chinese needs a reference temperature
of 30 degrees
so we can set the 30
degrees and pass it on
and the bot will try to
then either heat or not heat
the system to get to
those 30 degrees Celsius.
The same can be done for more stuff like
the humidity is if the fan
spins up to get more.
And then we will find
out if the humidity is a bit
bigger. There's more humidity outside.
So we have we will implement
some feature we can tell
about the location and the latitude
and longitude, and it will grab weather
from it. And if you if it knows
it's outside, you can
either pump in if you need more humidity
or out. If you hope you can somehow solve
this problem.
Yeah. Then you have the light intensity.
It's rather bright.
It can be brighter.
I will show you.
And yeah, the soil temperature
sensors in the soil and the sensors in
the water. And of course there's
heating and everything.
Also we have the awesome
machines part. We can actually turn
things off and on
again.
It's like the delay from the sun
to us. The seven minutes here, it's a bit
shorter.
Yeah, there's a..
OK, now we can also flood,
which shows that we can pump the water
from down here to up here
and at some point it hopefully
stops because it reaches
the water.
I'm guessing I'm not pushing.
Look, Ma, no hands.
And it stops.
Yeah.
For me.
Yeah, so this is what
we have for now and
what I want to have is some kind
of botnet
where the bots can exchange
information about how to grow the plants
and the actual people
behind the guardedness
can share recipes or
how to do this. And for this, I will
hand it back to what
machine learning paths we actually want
to have.
Thank you very much.
We miss all of the precious time we would
have loved to tell you so much more, um,
but hopefully next
year, um, in the coming year,
we will be able to to release the
software so we get people
who help us collect data.
And perhaps as as
together we could make a foundation
of public knowledge in form of data
where you can statistically analyze what
is really good for plants and fish and
make this accessible for many people.
This is our big hope.
And then we are very, very,
um, hoping that people find out
whether Speaker and Colbert like
this would make a difference for the fish
or the plants.
Or if you play music and
and I have a Geiger counter, I don't
know. This is, um.
We'll find out. Um, thank you very much
for your time. We sadly have to leave.
Um.