Hi All,
I’m based in Tasmania, Australia and I’m hoping to connect with other schools and educational institutions in Australia to share insights and experience, as well as seeking answers to some questions I have in relation to our own bot.
Please feel free to drop me a reply here or send me a PM to get in touch!
Cheers
Hi,
It is a mission to get them to connect. With the new Firmware, this supports Enterprise authentication, but the issue is having the ports unblocked to allow farmbot to access the internet. The current work around thus far is to use a Linux PC, which is allowed on the network and hosts the farmware. The farmbot is then connected to our local network.
Hi,
I’m based at a school in Sydney and am also keen to share experiences. With the new curriculum including agriculture, we are all having to break new ground and step out of our comfort zone.
I’m usually pretty good with machinery but this thing has had me stumped for months. I feel like I’m getting a better understanding of it now and whilst its not working perfectly, its a step in the right direction.
Unfortunately we only planted at the end of April so we’re not getting fantastic growth but it has been unseasonably warm in Sydney so it could be worse.
I am still struggling to get the soil moisture sensor to give me a reliable reading and the seeder needs a re-design but all in all, I’m happy with how its going. The watering tool also needed a re-design but I think I solved that pretty well.
My next addition to our little agriculture are will probably be a vertical farming tube with an irrigation system.
Hope your farmbot is working well for you and your crops are just reward for your efforts.
Regards,
Mark
Hi Mark,
I am on the PnC at a school in Southern Sydney and we are looking at the FarmBot. I am curios if you would share ytou experiences? Have the students engaged? Are you using it with any learning outcome links?
Regards,
Dave
Hi Dave,
Happy to share. I don’t actually teach it but we are using it for the agriculture section of the year 7 technology course. According to the other teachers, the girls at our school are engaging with the farmbot, creating their own farms on the app, controlling the bot and running watering sequences. A couple of interested students were the ones who programmed the sequences we are running at the moment.
If you’d like to come and have a look, you’re more than welcome. We are in Hurstville.
Ta
Mark
Hey
I am a school in Melbourne and we are wanting to start this, however I can’t find the Metal Brackets in a downloadable file so I can get them cut locally? Everything else I can get just the brackets I am having issues with.
ANy Ideas?
Hi,
I’m working with ACARA in a national project helping disadvantaged schools deploy the Digital Technologies Curriculum, and see SgTech as an excellent way of making microcontrollers real world.
I’ve been working predominantly in primary, putting resources together in the physical computing domain, largely using block code (and some python/javascript). I have a few on my youtube channel at youtube.com/martinlevins
The 7-9 space is where I’m headed next, and farmbot looks like a natural extension to the primary stuff.
Would anyone be keen on a video conf to meet up and discuss how things are going? I’d love to visit a school where the bot is working as well. I’m in the New England district of NSW (Armidale) so Hurstville looks good Mark, but I do get around a bit so other areas may be accessible as well
Thanks in advance
M
Hi Martin,
You’re more than welcome to come and have a look. We harvested all of our crops at the end of last year so there is nothing in there at the moment but we will be sewing seeds with our new year 7 groups in the next few weeks.
We had some pretty good success last year but I think we struggled a bit as we didn’t know what to plant and when to harvest etc. None of our faculty members are gardeners and that has made things tough.
As far as having the machine working well, it took a great deal of time and effort to get it going properly but I’m happy to offer advice to anybody trying to get their farmbot working.
Let me know if you’d like to chat further about it. My email is mark.gregory@danebank.nsw.edu.au
Ta
Mark
Hey Mark
Thanks for replying
Great to hear you’re on track!
I’ll try to organise a visit later this term when I’m back from some travels to other schools.
Tell me - are you an edtech guy who got interested in Ag, or vice versa?
Be in touch
M
Hiya J
Keen to find out what you are doing in this space, and where you are in Tassie.
See Feb 1 post for what I’m up to
M
Hi Martin,
I am a design and technology teacher who when faced with the national curriculum looked around and found the farmbot. I don’t actually teach the unit. I am simply the one charged with making the farmbot work.
Regards,
Mark
I’m at a school in NSW, and I decided to get one in 2016. It was hard enough to import it (with our centrally managed purchasing stuff), then I got iSTEM students to do the whole build as part of our robotics unit (which meant a few things got damaged and needed replacing but generally went well, meant that they felt more ownership and learned a lot about robotics, project management, overcoming frustrations etc!), and then started trying to get it online. I would have to count up all the hours I’ve spent on the phone, filling out forms, writing emails etc to try and get DET IT to open up the ports and get it online.
After a few years of this frustration I’ve taken it home to rebuild and troubleshoot. It’s been a helluva journey!
Would be good to organise an online meetup for Australian schools using Farmbot. Maybe over MS Teams? Or Zoom?
Hi Michael,
Were you able to get this working? If so can you please assist us with how to set up? We are also a NSW DoE school and are having trouble with the network