I’ve started hacking on a vertical farmbot design. My goal is for it to cost less than $1000, and hopefully still be compatible with the Farmbot Toolbay. I’ve put up a webpage about it here: http://tricorder.org/growbot/
Caveats: I have no pictures since I haven’t built a full system yet. I’m spending most of my time working on the telescoping component, since it’s really at the heart of my design. Right now, I’m mostly looking for feedback and ideas from growers & farmbotters. Do you see any gotchas or defects in the overall design? If there is something you could change, what would it be and why? Also, how important is compatibility with the Toolbay to you? Would you rather pay a little more and have precise control over fluid dispersal from the telescoping arm or pay $400 less and have a sprinkler in the device that essentially makes it rain?
It’s easily missed so I should also point out that I’ve also put a tiny email registration form at the bottom of the webpage, in case you want to keep abreast of news about the design.
Can we have both? If you’re planning on commercialising your work, give us options $400 is a big chunk of the whole sum, but it may actually be worth it to some. It would even be better if you’ve allow us to swap it at a later time for the additional $400-ish.
I understand your need to grow a community. But I’d love to see you post your updates here as well. It will naturally attract more traffic to your website.
I’m a big believer in the Farmbot and distributed farming vision but I must reluctantly report that I have shelved this project because I’ve come to the conclusion that there’s just no market for it right now… To illustrate, Farmbot itself has got a ton of free PR and sold very few farmbots so far. So it’s probably best we all just rally around Farmbot for now and support this project as best we can.
Regarding my build, what I built can be built at scale for around $500 or less, maybe $700 at most if you are buying from a few different distributors. Since i last posted I changed my design considerably and used a laser as someone suggested in another thread instead of a hydraulic weed smasher as I originally envisioned. If anyone else is considering doing this I would suggest you use a corexy style design and a 2W blue laser module for the weed / pest control. This and a computer controlled water valve for the sprinker can both be obtained on amazon for quite a reasonable price.
actually my friends told me farmbot could be build in $700 in china
i live here, i dont know much about hardware, but i’d bought many components at taobao.com (which is a chinese version of ebay/amazon), many were cheaper than you guys at western countries. also since i am a price sensor guy, i knew that you could replace those controll board to cheaper one like esp32, to save about $50 or more.
but except the price problem, farmbot has a big issue that it canot fit vertical farming, which were very popular in today’s hobists circles, (hydrogen aquaponic,aeroponic), and the reason is the arch choice which i think cant be improve if you wont change the main frames. i will find a time to draw a simple verticle 3d model showing you. i 'd talk this too much with friends
$400 is a big chunk of the whole sum, but it may actually be worth it to some. It would even be better if you’ve allow us to swap it at a later time for the additional $400-ish.