Vertical farming - a collaborative science experiment turned social enterprise

By Jacinta Penn

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This campaign was successful and closed on 17/05/2021 at 9:00 AM.

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About

Vertical Farming - A Collaborative Science Experiment Turned Social Enterprise

Project 2021-01-28 11:59:56 +1300

We started out to solve one problem and realised we could solve another.

Donate now to help us build a social enterprise that designs agritech STEM kits for kids and agritech microbusinesses that upskill people as they earn.

In 2050 the Earth's population will increase by another 2 billion people. With pressure on our food supply already, and with the extremes of climate change and labour shortages affecting our outdoor farms, indoor farming can provide a solution to the world's food security.  Vertical farming allows us to grow alot more plants in a smaller area, indoors, using 90% less water and no chemical pesticides. However, the cost of the LED lighting needed indoors to grow the layers of plants makes it hard to make a profit. Additionally you lose the ability to use tractors for seeding and harvesting. I myself live in a rural area of South Auckland renowned for its soil and have been dispayed to see housing encroaching further and further into our precious agricultural land. That has led me to my interest in vertical farming. Originally I started with the following question:

Can we build a viable vertical farm with cost reducing technology?

But our end result is

How can we create, inspire and educate our tamariki and tangata with agritech?

As part of a Masters in Tech futures, I want to conduct a project to see if I can make indoor farming with artificial lighting more cost effective. Lighting is also commonly used in greenhouses now to increase productivity in winter. I have an idea of how to cut the cost of lighting without affecting plant growth. Additionally with the use of automation and robotics we can reduce the cost of labour for repetitive farming tasks while still leaving jobs for more skilled labour and automation maintenance.

The robotics provides an interesting social component. Not only can it take over with some of the more repetitive tasks, but it could possibly enable people with disabilities to work on the farm remotely.

This is where it gets interesting. Due to my background in learning design, I have interest from local high schools and teritary institures to involve students in the project to learn about automation and modern farming. There is also discussion on creating agritech STEM project kits for schools. And I have spoken with iwi about the potential for vertical farms to provide food, jobs and skills attainment opportunities on small plots of land not suited for traditional farming. Local farmers and agritech companies have offered to assist. This project is more than just science, or business - it's a collaboration of interested parties to bring innovation and change to Aotearoa.

There have been less and less kids, particularly Maori and Pacifica, moving into tech and agriculture after school. We need to ignite their passion for it, and show them the amazing things that are possible.

We are becoming a social enterprise - bringing automation skills to our tamariki and updating the skills of adults. 

I have completed the literature research, the project planning, and bought the insulated shipping container - it's time to test the theory.

 

I have set three targets; $5K, $20K and $80K.

 

Minimum target: $5K (Getting started)

With this we can start with a simple set up; electricity, mobile air conditioning, two hydroponics garden kits and the two lighting systems, one control and one experimental. Robotics work will be done on a pc based simulator.

 

Extended target: 20K (Advanced hydroponics and robotics trial)

Intelligent dosing unit, commercial air conditioning and an i-beam for robot arm travel. Short term use of a Universal Robotics arm to test automation of tasks. This will also give us the funds to start designing agritech STEM kits for schools.

 

Reach target: 100K (Full vertical farm kitout with robotic arm)

This would enable us to do a full kitout of the vertical farm and purchase a robotic arm to use in the farm. This would enable us to set up a social enterprise after the research is completed, around agritech, automation and robotics with an emphasis on skill aquisition for students and iwi.

 

Final note: Originally we had hoped to boot strap this experiment ourselves, but when Covid hit, we had a tough year and we had to just tread water for a while. I am hoping with the help of New Zealanders, we can get back on track and create what could be a real boon to our agritech industry and to our tangata, whenua and atua. 

Want to know more? Check out www.verbfarms.co.nz 

Comments

Updates 9

You need to pledge to see this update.

Masters presented with great feedback

09/12/2021 at 5:19 PM

I wanted to let you all know that I have now presented my Masters report to the assessors. Their feedback was overwhelmingly positive. They found the analysis was substantial, and that I had pivoted well when I realised some of my assumptions had been incorrect, and that they could see real potential going forward.

Here is a quick summary of what I shared:

Robotics just wasn't realistic. Through actually running the farm, I realised that I spent far more of my time working out solutions to issues such as tip burn and algae, and cleaning, then on repetitive tasks I had assumed would be good for a robot to take over. 3 hours at a time on google and youtube, vs 2 minutes to plant 100 seeds. Plus I really enjoyed those little tasks, and for the potential farmers we talked to, thats what they looked forward to.

This experience made me realise how hard it is to start farming with hydroponics as a beginner. You don't know what you will need to build it, to run it, to harvest, to package, and you certainly don't know what to do when something goes wrong.

The design on the little garden kits made it very difficult to harvest from. You had to use tiny scissors on every individual plant. The reservoirs were difficult to remove when they needed cleaning. This made me realise how much good design matters and how being able to remove a whole tray of plants, pop them on a table and run them under a Greens Harvester would save hours of time.

Additionally vertical farming has come a long way in the last year. You can now find more and more farms or vertical systems available for import from China. Its an area we would struggle to complete with on price. We will import one of the hydroponic systems and see if it might provide an easier, more scaleable way to build a farm.

However, in the time we have run this project we have realise that its the knowledge which is valuable and needed.

So thats where we are focussing;setting it up so people have or know everything they need to run the farm; have software to support them; have markets ready to buy their product. 

I will start building the software in 2022.

We have created an amazing partnership with Kete Kai and have a burgeoning relationship with Frankling Agritech to partner and build with us. We have started to create whanaungatanga (relationships) with iwi. We are building an agritech STEM kit with COVE Food and Fibre.

And its all thanks to you all, for your support in getting it started.

For those last few still waiting their rewards, the lettuce pack rewards will come out of the next crop, now that we know what we are doing and the summary report will come out soon.

Thank you, ngā mihi nui,

Jacinta Penn

COVE Agritech STEM kit project approved!

19/10/2021 at 5:27 PM

In this week's exciting news, the COVE Food and Fibre board approved a grant for Verb Farms to create an agritech STEM kit for 11-12 year olds.

This means I can put aside time from contracting to focus on this work and do a pilot with local schools who have already expressed an interest. 

Additionally our gutters have finally been delivered after a long delay due to lockdowns. We can start installing them over the next few weeks. Meanwhile we have progressed with what we had.

Our experiments so far have showed a distinct difference between the growth of plants under the constant light and the pulsing light. Our next crop is almost ready to plant in the ebb and flow table with the seeds having just germinated. This will have a shorter pulsing sequence.

We have learned alot so far, mostly by making mistakes and it has made us realise that knowledge will be a super important part of our farms. 

Thanks again for all your support and hope you are enjoying the updates!

You need to pledge to see this update.

Progress made thanks to our pledgers

20/06/2021 at 1:04 PM

Its been a busy few weeks since the end of our fundraiser and we wanted to give you an update.

Firstly we installed shelving for the seedlings and as a work area. 

Then we ordered lighting. This came in parts which we needed to put together ourselves. This has been helpful in confirming that for the Agritech STEM kits we need a different cheaper kind of LED light that comes prebuilt. We spent quite a bit of time working on the initial STEM kit idea to make it more affordable and also smaller for easier delivery. While they aren't materials you would use for commercial farming, they are certainly sufficient for kids to learn all the math, science, engineering and nature concepts.

In addition to installing lights on the bottom of the shelves for seedlings, we also put together the lights for the garden kits.

The temperature control has also been installed. We went with the simplest system we could that has a timer, so we can have different temperatures for 'day' and 'night'. After a constructive discussion with the guys at Perfect Air, we added wifi so that we can use the 'dry' function on the air conditioner as humidity control, rather than adding a separate dehumidifier. Plants transpire moisture into the air, so controlling humidity is important. We need to add a sensor that also has wifi, so if humidity hits a maximum level we can switch the air con to dry for a short time using its wifi connection. Once we know how often we have to do this, we should be able to programme it into the air con to do automatically.

Eventually we hope to be able to get a system like Intelliclimate from Autogrow which can control these automatically based on sensor readings. Autogrow has also reached out and invited us to their vertical grow room to come and see how their systems work.

Next we hook up the electrical using an external high amp system on RCD we were using for the old spa. Lucky that was there already!

Hope to start growing in the next few weeks. Meanwhile we await feedback from COVE on our agritech STEM kit proposal. Can't wait to get started on designing the lesson plans for that!

Thank you all again for your donations that got us started. Most of you will have received your pledge rewards now, except for those based on our growing them! We have so much support to get this going from all directions. We had a great chat with MPI at Fieldays who grabbed our details with great enthusiasm.

In one last exciting turn, we were trying to find an alternative to rockwool for growing the plants in, since these are bad for the environment and for worker health. We may have stumbled across an opportunity to use waste wool - we are planning a little home hackathon for that soon. More about that in our next update!

 

We made it to $5k! What a day!

16/05/2021 at 6:00 PM

What an amazing day. We had a final round of generous donations who helped us cross the finish line of our minimum target.

This will allow us to buy a mobile air con unit and the lighting we need. Every donation from now can go toward upgrading.

For instance we might go from manual measurements to a peristaltic pump which mixes the nutrients according to sensor measurements. 

Or the robot and an extra hydroponic kit we want to test for the kids agritech kit.

For those of you who have given, thank you so much. I will make sure your rewards come out to you as soon as possible. Or as soon as we have grown them!

For those of you who are following and haven't donated, thanks so much for your interest. If you would still like to donate, we have about 14 hours to go.

Donate, share, tell à friend. It's all appreciated.

Meanwhile.. I haven't been sitting back waiting. The marine ply flooring finally arrived! Since we are using a container due to lack of garage space, we need to put down new flooring. Construction materials are hard to get so we had to compromise a little and go for a 12ml ply but it should be OK as it is supported along the whole floor by steel t bars rather than occasional joists. We went for marine ply low emission so it is less affected by spills and safe in a enclosed space.

For additional waterproofing, I covered both sides. Unfortunately the custom cut lengths were 1cm too long and we need to do a little trim for a better fit. I really wanted to show you it ready to go but not quite yet.

But here is our progress so far. Thanks again! And please keep sharing. 

Halfway and agritech STEM project proposal under way

06/05/2021 at 4:42 PM

Thanks so much for everyone's contributions. We have hit the halfway mark with 11 days to go. It's looking really good. We have also caught the attention of some agritech groups, and we are currently working on our first proposal for an agritech STEM kit for schools, before our experiment is even finished! 

It has helped us immensely to define our mission further. We want to create a social enterprise that upskills our youth and inspires them into agritech careers and also creates microbusiness opportunities for adults that upskill you while you work.

We have added some great new rewards with leafy green packs people can buy for themselves or donate to charity. You have already done so much and we are almost there. If you could talk about us to one other person, or share about us on one social network, we can do it.

Nga mihi nui, ka kite ano!

Now with support from Artiminds for robot programming!

27/04/2021 at 9:36 PM

In exciting news, we are happy to announce the support of Artiminds in helping us with our robot simulation build. Figuring out how to do the robot has been one of the greatest challenges, since I don't come from an engineering background. I approached Artiminds because I was impressed with their step by step drag and drop programming style, with tool tips and integration with multiple robot systems. 

One of those robot arms in the Universal Robot series, one of which Callaghan has available for loan. So if everything works out, we will be able to build the simulation, and then plug in the robot and test it out. 

I was hoping at most for an education discount on the software. Instead Artiminds have offered to support me through the project, and offered advice on next steps. This is great news and sets us up really well. I have just ordered the CAD files for the items in our simulation.

Don't forget to keep sharing the link for our fundraiser with your friends and colleagues. We really appreciate your support.

Amazing progress - with build and fundraising!

20/04/2021 at 10:43 AM

It's been a busy couple of days and we are so grateful to all those who have contributed. We aren't waiting but are continuing on with the little things we can. Over the last few days I engaged my daughter to help me build our first hydroponic garden set. I had doubts over buying kits rather than doing something custom made, but have been pleased at how it has worked out, and it means we can concentrate on the tech, rather than the hydroponic build. Additionally I have set up a virtual machine and installed the UR+ simulator for the robotics sim. Now I need to create or find a 3d CAD model of the hydroponics garden so we can simulate planting on it. Busy, busy, busy!

Starting the next generation of builders/engineers!

Maddy opening the kit boxMaddyBuildingMaddyTrapped

The final result!

FinalResult

    Pledgers 40

    Tony Meyer
    20/04/2021 at 11:37am
    David Swaddle
    20/04/2021 at 8:26am

    "Grow Jacinta!"

    Maria Cassin
    19/04/2021 at 3:25pm

    "I look forward to seeing the results. Your thinking is always ahead of your time!"

    Ian Crook
    19/04/2021 at 8:38am
    Diana
    17/04/2021 at 9:41am
    Sharyn Carter
    17/04/2021 at 9:07am

    "Huge potential + Passionate people + Smarts to see it through = Looking forward to the tour so my son sees the future and what's possible. "

    Rob Fyfe
    16/04/2021 at 8:52pm

    "Great project"

    Le-roy Staines
    16/04/2021 at 2:03pm

    "I’d love to learn more about vertical farming and perhaps get into that space at some point! Keep me on your list in case you’re ever doing a seed round in the future, or need a sounding board for someone tech minded. Kind regards, Le-roy Staines [email protected]"

    Ursula McCormack
    16/04/2021 at 11:23am
    Jenene Crossan
    16/04/2021 at 9:12am

    "Proud to know you. Good luck with the research "

    Followers

    Followers of Vertical farming - a collaborative science experiment turned social enterprise

    Vertical Farming - A Collaborative Science Experiment Turned Social Enterprise

    Project 2021-01-28 11:59:56 +1300

    We started out to solve one problem and realised we could solve another.

    Donate now to help us build a social enterprise that designs agritech STEM kits for kids and agritech microbusinesses that upskill people as they earn.

    In 2050 the Earth's population will increase by another 2 billion people. With pressure on our food supply already, and with the extremes of climate change and labour shortages affecting our outdoor farms, indoor farming can provide a solution to the world's food security.  Vertical farming allows us to grow alot more plants in a smaller area, indoors, using 90% less water and no chemical pesticides. However, the cost of the LED lighting needed indoors to grow the layers of plants makes it hard to make a profit. Additionally you lose the ability to use tractors for seeding and harvesting. I myself live in a rural area of South Auckland renowned for its soil and have been dispayed to see housing encroaching further and further into our precious agricultural land. That has led me to my interest in vertical farming. Originally I started with the following question:

    Can we build a viable vertical farm with cost reducing technology?

    But our end result is

    How can we create, inspire and educate our tamariki and tangata with agritech?

    As part of a Masters in Tech futures, I want to conduct a project to see if I can make indoor farming with artificial lighting more cost effective. Lighting is also commonly used in greenhouses now to increase productivity in winter. I have an idea of how to cut the cost of lighting without affecting plant growth. Additionally with the use of automation and robotics we can reduce the cost of labour for repetitive farming tasks while still leaving jobs for more skilled labour and automation maintenance.

    The robotics provides an interesting social component. Not only can it take over with some of the more repetitive tasks, but it could possibly enable people with disabilities to work on the farm remotely.

    This is where it gets interesting. Due to my background in learning design, I have interest from local high schools and teritary institures to involve students in the project to learn about automation and modern farming. There is also discussion on creating agritech STEM project kits for schools. And I have spoken with iwi about the potential for vertical farms to provide food, jobs and skills attainment opportunities on small plots of land not suited for traditional farming. Local farmers and agritech companies have offered to assist. This project is more than just science, or business - it's a collaboration of interested parties to bring innovation and change to Aotearoa.

    There have been less and less kids, particularly Maori and Pacifica, moving into tech and agriculture after school. We need to ignite their passion for it, and show them the amazing things that are possible.

    We are becoming a social enterprise - bringing automation skills to our tamariki and updating the skills of adults. 

    I have completed the literature research, the project planning, and bought the insulated shipping container - it's time to test the theory.

     

    I have set three targets; $5K, $20K and $80K.

     

    Minimum target: $5K (Getting started)

    With this we can start with a simple set up; electricity, mobile air conditioning, two hydroponics garden kits and the two lighting systems, one control and one experimental. Robotics work will be done on a pc based simulator.

     

    Extended target: 20K (Advanced hydroponics and robotics trial)

    Intelligent dosing unit, commercial air conditioning and an i-beam for robot arm travel. Short term use of a Universal Robotics arm to test automation of tasks. This will also give us the funds to start designing agritech STEM kits for schools.

     

    Reach target: 100K (Full vertical farm kitout with robotic arm)

    This would enable us to do a full kitout of the vertical farm and purchase a robotic arm to use in the farm. This would enable us to set up a social enterprise after the research is completed, around agritech, automation and robotics with an emphasis on skill aquisition for students and iwi.

     

    Final note: Originally we had hoped to boot strap this experiment ourselves, but when Covid hit, we had a tough year and we had to just tread water for a while. I am hoping with the help of New Zealanders, we can get back on track and create what could be a real boon to our agritech industry and to our tangata, whenua and atua. 

    Want to know more? Check out www.verbfarms.co.nz 

    Comments

    You need to pledge to see this update.

    Masters presented with great feedback

    09/12/2021 at 5:19 PM

    I wanted to let you all know that I have now presented my Masters report to the assessors. Their feedback was overwhelmingly positive. They found the analysis was substantial, and that I had pivoted well when I realised some of my assumptions had been incorrect, and that they could see real potential going forward.

    Here is a quick summary of what I shared:

    Robotics just wasn't realistic. Through actually running the farm, I realised that I spent far more of my time working out solutions to issues such as tip burn and algae, and cleaning, then on repetitive tasks I had assumed would be good for a robot to take over. 3 hours at a time on google and youtube, vs 2 minutes to plant 100 seeds. Plus I really enjoyed those little tasks, and for the potential farmers we talked to, thats what they looked forward to.

    This experience made me realise how hard it is to start farming with hydroponics as a beginner. You don't know what you will need to build it, to run it, to harvest, to package, and you certainly don't know what to do when something goes wrong.

    The design on the little garden kits made it very difficult to harvest from. You had to use tiny scissors on every individual plant. The reservoirs were difficult to remove when they needed cleaning. This made me realise how much good design matters and how being able to remove a whole tray of plants, pop them on a table and run them under a Greens Harvester would save hours of time.

    Additionally vertical farming has come a long way in the last year. You can now find more and more farms or vertical systems available for import from China. Its an area we would struggle to complete with on price. We will import one of the hydroponic systems and see if it might provide an easier, more scaleable way to build a farm.

    However, in the time we have run this project we have realise that its the knowledge which is valuable and needed.

    So thats where we are focussing;setting it up so people have or know everything they need to run the farm; have software to support them; have markets ready to buy their product. 

    I will start building the software in 2022.

    We have created an amazing partnership with Kete Kai and have a burgeoning relationship with Frankling Agritech to partner and build with us. We have started to create whanaungatanga (relationships) with iwi. We are building an agritech STEM kit with COVE Food and Fibre.

    And its all thanks to you all, for your support in getting it started.

    For those last few still waiting their rewards, the lettuce pack rewards will come out of the next crop, now that we know what we are doing and the summary report will come out soon.

    Thank you, ngā mihi nui,

    Jacinta Penn

    COVE Agritech STEM kit project approved!

    19/10/2021 at 5:27 PM

    In this week's exciting news, the COVE Food and Fibre board approved a grant for Verb Farms to create an agritech STEM kit for 11-12 year olds.

    This means I can put aside time from contracting to focus on this work and do a pilot with local schools who have already expressed an interest. 

    Additionally our gutters have finally been delivered after a long delay due to lockdowns. We can start installing them over the next few weeks. Meanwhile we have progressed with what we had.

    Our experiments so far have showed a distinct difference between the growth of plants under the constant light and the pulsing light. Our next crop is almost ready to plant in the ebb and flow table with the seeds having just germinated. This will have a shorter pulsing sequence.

    We have learned alot so far, mostly by making mistakes and it has made us realise that knowledge will be a super important part of our farms. 

    Thanks again for all your support and hope you are enjoying the updates!

    You need to pledge to see this update.

    Progress made thanks to our pledgers

    20/06/2021 at 1:04 PM

    Its been a busy few weeks since the end of our fundraiser and we wanted to give you an update.

    Firstly we installed shelving for the seedlings and as a work area. 

    Then we ordered lighting. This came in parts which we needed to put together ourselves. This has been helpful in confirming that for the Agritech STEM kits we need a different cheaper kind of LED light that comes prebuilt. We spent quite a bit of time working on the initial STEM kit idea to make it more affordable and also smaller for easier delivery. While they aren't materials you would use for commercial farming, they are certainly sufficient for kids to learn all the math, science, engineering and nature concepts.

    In addition to installing lights on the bottom of the shelves for seedlings, we also put together the lights for the garden kits.

    The temperature control has also been installed. We went with the simplest system we could that has a timer, so we can have different temperatures for 'day' and 'night'. After a constructive discussion with the guys at Perfect Air, we added wifi so that we can use the 'dry' function on the air conditioner as humidity control, rather than adding a separate dehumidifier. Plants transpire moisture into the air, so controlling humidity is important. We need to add a sensor that also has wifi, so if humidity hits a maximum level we can switch the air con to dry for a short time using its wifi connection. Once we know how often we have to do this, we should be able to programme it into the air con to do automatically.

    Eventually we hope to be able to get a system like Intelliclimate from Autogrow which can control these automatically based on sensor readings. Autogrow has also reached out and invited us to their vertical grow room to come and see how their systems work.

    Next we hook up the electrical using an external high amp system on RCD we were using for the old spa. Lucky that was there already!

    Hope to start growing in the next few weeks. Meanwhile we await feedback from COVE on our agritech STEM kit proposal. Can't wait to get started on designing the lesson plans for that!

    Thank you all again for your donations that got us started. Most of you will have received your pledge rewards now, except for those based on our growing them! We have so much support to get this going from all directions. We had a great chat with MPI at Fieldays who grabbed our details with great enthusiasm.

    In one last exciting turn, we were trying to find an alternative to rockwool for growing the plants in, since these are bad for the environment and for worker health. We may have stumbled across an opportunity to use waste wool - we are planning a little home hackathon for that soon. More about that in our next update!

     

    We made it to $5k! What a day!

    16/05/2021 at 6:00 PM

    What an amazing day. We had a final round of generous donations who helped us cross the finish line of our minimum target.

    This will allow us to buy a mobile air con unit and the lighting we need. Every donation from now can go toward upgrading.

    For instance we might go from manual measurements to a peristaltic pump which mixes the nutrients according to sensor measurements. 

    Or the robot and an extra hydroponic kit we want to test for the kids agritech kit.

    For those of you who have given, thank you so much. I will make sure your rewards come out to you as soon as possible. Or as soon as we have grown them!

    For those of you who are following and haven't donated, thanks so much for your interest. If you would still like to donate, we have about 14 hours to go.

    Donate, share, tell à friend. It's all appreciated.

    Meanwhile.. I haven't been sitting back waiting. The marine ply flooring finally arrived! Since we are using a container due to lack of garage space, we need to put down new flooring. Construction materials are hard to get so we had to compromise a little and go for a 12ml ply but it should be OK as it is supported along the whole floor by steel t bars rather than occasional joists. We went for marine ply low emission so it is less affected by spills and safe in a enclosed space.

    For additional waterproofing, I covered both sides. Unfortunately the custom cut lengths were 1cm too long and we need to do a little trim for a better fit. I really wanted to show you it ready to go but not quite yet.

    But here is our progress so far. Thanks again! And please keep sharing. 

    Halfway and agritech STEM project proposal under way

    06/05/2021 at 4:42 PM

    Thanks so much for everyone's contributions. We have hit the halfway mark with 11 days to go. It's looking really good. We have also caught the attention of some agritech groups, and we are currently working on our first proposal for an agritech STEM kit for schools, before our experiment is even finished! 

    It has helped us immensely to define our mission further. We want to create a social enterprise that upskills our youth and inspires them into agritech careers and also creates microbusiness opportunities for adults that upskill you while you work.

    We have added some great new rewards with leafy green packs people can buy for themselves or donate to charity. You have already done so much and we are almost there. If you could talk about us to one other person, or share about us on one social network, we can do it.

    Nga mihi nui, ka kite ano!

    Now with support from Artiminds for robot programming!

    27/04/2021 at 9:36 PM

    In exciting news, we are happy to announce the support of Artiminds in helping us with our robot simulation build. Figuring out how to do the robot has been one of the greatest challenges, since I don't come from an engineering background. I approached Artiminds because I was impressed with their step by step drag and drop programming style, with tool tips and integration with multiple robot systems. 

    One of those robot arms in the Universal Robot series, one of which Callaghan has available for loan. So if everything works out, we will be able to build the simulation, and then plug in the robot and test it out. 

    I was hoping at most for an education discount on the software. Instead Artiminds have offered to support me through the project, and offered advice on next steps. This is great news and sets us up really well. I have just ordered the CAD files for the items in our simulation.

    Don't forget to keep sharing the link for our fundraiser with your friends and colleagues. We really appreciate your support.

    Amazing progress - with build and fundraising!

    20/04/2021 at 10:43 AM

    It's been a busy couple of days and we are so grateful to all those who have contributed. We aren't waiting but are continuing on with the little things we can. Over the last few days I engaged my daughter to help me build our first hydroponic garden set. I had doubts over buying kits rather than doing something custom made, but have been pleased at how it has worked out, and it means we can concentrate on the tech, rather than the hydroponic build. Additionally I have set up a virtual machine and installed the UR+ simulator for the robotics sim. Now I need to create or find a 3d CAD model of the hydroponics garden so we can simulate planting on it. Busy, busy, busy!

    Starting the next generation of builders/engineers!

    Maddy opening the kit boxMaddyBuildingMaddyTrapped

    The final result!

    FinalResult

      Tony Meyer
      20/04/2021 at 11:37am
      David Swaddle
      20/04/2021 at 8:26am

      "Grow Jacinta!"

      Maria Cassin
      19/04/2021 at 3:25pm

      "I look forward to seeing the results. Your thinking is always ahead of your time!"

      Ian Crook
      19/04/2021 at 8:38am
      Diana
      17/04/2021 at 9:41am
      Sharyn Carter
      17/04/2021 at 9:07am

      "Huge potential + Passionate people + Smarts to see it through = Looking forward to the tour so my son sees the future and what's possible. "

      Rob Fyfe
      16/04/2021 at 8:52pm

      "Great project"

      Le-roy Staines
      16/04/2021 at 2:03pm

      "I’d love to learn more about vertical farming and perhaps get into that space at some point! Keep me on your list in case you’re ever doing a seed round in the future, or need a sounding board for someone tech minded. Kind regards, Le-roy Staines [email protected]"

      Ursula McCormack
      16/04/2021 at 11:23am
      Jenene Crossan
      16/04/2021 at 9:12am

      "Proud to know you. Good luck with the research "

      Followers of Vertical farming - a collaborative science experiment turned social enterprise

      This campaign was successful and got its funding on 17/05/2021 at 9:00 AM.
      Thank You
      Seed Your Garden And Ours
      Leafy Green 4 Pack With Nutrients
      Gardening Pack - Gloves And Seeds
      Research Summary And Farm Build Instructions
      Leafy Green 4 Pack Every Month For 3 Months
      20 Pack Leafy Greens For Charity Of Your Choice
      20 Pack Leafy Green Pack For Charity Of Our Choice
      Printed Certificate Of Thanks
      Green Shoots Leafy Green Seedlings Kit
      Personal Tour Of The Vertical Farm
      Hydroponic Kit 6 Pots
      Kitchen Herb Planter Box
      Hydroponic Slanted Kit 36 Pots
      Robotic Arm Donated To The School Of Your Choice
      Hydroponic Kit 12 Plants
      3 Tiered Hydroponic Kit 108 Pot
      Lunch For 4 And Personal Tour