Sounds like a very promising venture. I like that you're willing to share the data and are offering an intelligence unit.

Have you thought of implementing experimental designs at scale? like you're intelligence unit could organize large scale controlled experiments on possible improvements in technique/process/genetics with willing participants. Since all the systems are controlled, closed loop, and use the same equipment a lot of variance that is present in typical ag experiments would be avoided. This combined with a high number of participants to replicate the experiment could offer a robust platform for rapid improvement via citizen science.

Thanks @thatcat .. I need to credit micckey at Post Scarcity Robotics for the inspiration to collaborate, that's been my primary driver the last few months to find other people who are like minded and work with them. https://github.com/limikael/ideas/blob/master/PostScarcityRo...

My primary focus is on the scale, implementing something that is both safe, easy to operate (idiot proof) and environmentally friendly (negative carbon footprint).

My goal is to be able to self realize an economy of scale as it pertains to my own AI/IA interests. Robotic assembly, etc. but not necessarily bringing it to foxconn -- at the same time secure enough that if you want to run it over tor and grow psychadelic cactus in the desert you can do that too -- although it will require loading your own custom software.

I'm a 3rd generation farming family (in general ornamental agriculture) and I've been designing these systems myself for years. I expect humans to screw up this planet in the next 10-20 years and so these are what we'll need to survive in our bunkers; I don't want any shitty drm or anything.

The AI is also a bit complex; but the goal is to allow the units to work together in a quorum for fault tolerance. I literally expect these devices to keep people alive, and hopefully eliminate food deserts at the same time.

> before climate change really kicks into full gear and destroys outdoor gardens

Not sure what the case will be that you can sustain yourself on your apartment tomato while outdoors is Armageddon. Nice! Good luck with your marketing strategy!

marketing strategy is key.

The tech & science behind the yield optimization -- up to 6x 'overclocked photosynthesis'

using aeroponics (not soil), optimized for photonic efficiency -- humans can accelerate the growth of plants substantially effectively "overlocking" nature.

it's based on the Minskey/MIT media lab designs and some pieces I found in China -- a training gym for growing plants, but with a non-laboratory 'real world' implementation.

also I don't think a single unit would be sufficient - not from a redundancy standpoint you'd want at least three for a 'quorum' and redundancy if life depended on it. otherwise it's a novelty -- but it's cheap enough everybody can afford one; and it has gamification to make it fun. it's a vegetable appliance "for your health"

the idea is micro-to-macro scalable; you can start with one in your childs room, and the move it to the patio or the garage.

the units themselves are designed to run for 100+ years -- and you can either connect to our cloud or run your own on some commodity hardware (like a raspberry pi).

if the yields go up; with year round growing cycles and cloning mature plants it won't take a ton of vertical space.

did I mention it also makes fresh air?

I’d be careful before following the MIT media lab designs too carefully. Their agriculture project has been called “mostly smoke and mirrors”: https://www.businessinsider.com/mit-media-lab-personal-food-...

thanks @shoyer -- i'm not; but conceptually they were closest. By increasing the intensity of the light (in pulses) at specific frequencies in the 420nm growth & 700nm veg we can increase yield. Each light frequency causes a different type of growth inside the auxins part of a plants central nervous system.

Photosynthesis is a chemical reaction and it works similar to a doped transistor pre-saturation when going from light to dark. This is why plants roughly grow the same on sunny and cloudy days despite having MORE energy on the sunny day. By controlling the nutrients; pulsing the light and watching the leaves we can build stronger chemical pathways inside the plant .. I'm calling these "cybernetic pathways" since it's organic plus artificial intelligence.

The MIT work was funded (in part) by the world-class douche nozzle Jeffery Epstein as well; but studying that did inspire me so I feel like credit is due. MIT at the time also lacked the AI technology libraries we have today to make something cost effective anyway. Espressif Esp32 w/ov2640 cameras are so cheap!!

I grew up in commercial agriculture; 3rd generation ornamental farmer & ag-scientist who dropped the family business of farming for the dot-com bubble yay "Internet" tech! This is me going back to my "roots" and teaching a positronic brain how to accelerate plant growth, so it scratches my AI & IOT itch at the same time.

I showed my dad that MIT research as a kid and he called it crap told me the reasons it doesn't work "no soil" haha .. farmers don't like to change unless they need to which is why I'm not targeting farmers at all; instead a residential appliance which is "soil-less" allowing more efficient nutrient distribution and also allowing oxidation of the roots by disabling pumps. In China they use positive pressure on the root systems to actually force the fertilizer in -- haven't seen anything like that in the west. The soil in the US is almost dead; it's losing nutrients so fast due to over fertilization we need better solutions.

Being from Southern California we had a lot of hyper water efficient indoor stealth growing in the Cannabis space. That's where most of the experience comes from -- but those guys (my friends) don't like to show off what they're doing. .. that's why this needs to be something that works anywhere.

> humans can accelerate the growth of plants substantially effectively "overlocking" nature.

For the production of biomass you need photosynthesis. The coupling between the amount of photons you supply and the produced biomass is strong and uncicumventable. So even when you implement all the nice optimizations to accelerate plant growth, you still need to supply a proportional amount of light. If this light is artificial, which you need to achieve the claimed space efficiency, then this implies a lot of energy and monetary cost.

When growing indoors, shutting out the sun light that is supplied for free, you even worsen the situation.

I think it is nice for people to grow some of their food themselves, but this method is nowhere near solving any of the problems agriculture and horticulture are going to face in the near future.

@jsilence - the GrowPotBot is micro-scale but using relays it could control a much bigger system so a single unit could control a greenhouse or space-station. Just like a PC could control one light in your home or many.

For a space station i'd recommend having at least three of them and a quorum protocol to detect failures. (planned, but not in the MVP)

now let's get into "GrowPotBot is a toy which doesn't solve any problems" .... hmm, okay let's start by ignoring the urban food deserts in poverty stricten areas and focus on the "food that looks like food but isn't really nutritious due to it being harvested before it was ripe and then sat in a refrigerated storeroom or transport ship for a year before you got it" .. so that creates a MASSIVE carbon footprint between refrigeration and storage. it was also irradiated and chemically treated to destroy any bugs before it was allowed to move across borders.

Also -- at least in the land down under (where I am) in Australia we have the largest density per capita of hydroponic growers in the world and something curious happened because .... well, FUCK capitalism where a handful of growers cut costs and used nasty fertilizers and made 'unhealthy toxic hydro vegetables' or at least that is NOW what the public perception, so a lot of people want more control over what they eat and GrowPotBot delivers that.

i personally don't like getting my food from nameless industrial agriculture who is using who knows what pesticides, if you're cool with that then good on ya!

which brings me to respond to your last point that sunlight is somehow better. umm.. no. that's false.

i love sunlight; getting the vitamin D. but sunlight is only available in limited quantities during the daytime and plants can actually grow and grow and grow for 18-20 hours per day. plants actually do marginal photosynthesis in moonlight btw. plants evolved with the sun we have, so yeah -- of course sunlight works; but they're actually quite 'inefficient'

if you've got sunlight and can control heat WHILE keeping the pests and organisms (soil fungus) away then absolutely it's possible to design an enclosure which uses natural sunlight. the bigger it gets; the more difficult a proposition that is.

there's some fascinating research in this area; but suffice to say that frequency and intensity with a intelligent optical sensors in a closed feedback loop (positronic farming) is something "new" -- and "new" ag-tech is exceptionally rare. the thing is -- it's more computer/electronics than it is farming, and farmers like to rely on natural systems versus man-made systems which is why I'm skipping the farmers and going straight to the consumers.

now for the science:

plants use red 650nm-720nm & blue !420nm and reflect green light. red produces fruit "veg" and blue produces growth "blue" and again green is reflected. this is known, google "why leaves are green" and how chlorophyll operates to generate sugar and growth.

solar panels take in full spectrum photons regardless of frequency including x-ray, gamma rays, bla bla .. and newer [future] versions actually convert waste heat back into current -- this means that we're effectively able to take in full spectrum sunlight and change the frequency to something plants can use. i suspect we'll see clear solar panels / nano-films at some point.

GrowPotBot is using 12v LED fobs doped for specific frequencies which have very (absurdly) high efficiency rates and very low heat dumps compared to traditional grow rooms which often require massive cooling. so please don't compare us to those medieval monolithic architectures with giant high pressure sodium monsters. thanks!