Here in the UK, allotments are currently back in fashion - garden-sized strips of land assigned to people who rent them for a small amount each year. Currently in demand again, especially in cities where flat-dwellers might not have their own garden - you can spend a few hours a week getting out of the house and getting some exercise / fresh air. A traditional allotment does take a bit of a time commitment, and of course not every day is sunny, and free allotments in some areas are very limited, so maybe combine allotments with a farming robot. Get a parcel of land, maybe a way outside town (but accessible via public transport), split it up into allotments that people can farm daily remotely or come and visit for a nice day out. The sort of thing a farm with a farm shop or pick-your-own operation could diversify into - rent out strips of land for remote users to tinker around on, handle shipping them their ripe produce for a reasonable fee.
The project is from circa-2000, I remember being impressed by the idea at the time, and I'd have thought slug-hunting robots would be more of a common thing by now - turns out robotics for agriculture are hard.
But actually, if most people weren't so averse to biological organisms, perhaps we would've had computer controlled ducks, rats, hens and other small animals by now.
Why bother reinventing the whole thing when you could just replace (part of) their brains.
Seriously. If you've ever watched utility crews installing or repairing underground fiber, and then had moles colonize your yard, there is only one logical conclusion: silly humans, you are doing it wrong.
The problem is e-coli (and a few similar things). Animal poop is full of it, and we don't want that in our food supply. Machines don't leave e-coli behind to contaminate our food like biological organisms do. (hint wash your fresh food!)
Hmmmm. Let me start by saying that I've been eating unwashed fresh food (plant and animal both) since I was crawling (as have most of my friends and family members) without any incidence of health issues. In fact, one of the things I couldn't understand after I moved from Poland to the US, is how come all of the American kids have routine gut and intestinal issues. Specifically, what is a "stomach flu" that these kids keep talking about?
I've brought near-dead piglets seemingly back to good health by giving them a spoonful of rich compost, almost certain to be teaming with e-coli among all sorts of other microbes considered to be pathogenic.
>Animal poop is full of it, and we don't want that in our food supply.
Animal poop is already in our commercial food supply, especially vegetables as you alluded to. Hell, quite a lot of rat and mice meat is allowed in our commercial meats here in the US.
>Machines don't leave e-coli behind to contaminate our food like biological organisms do.
No, instead machines leave behind oil, gas, coolant residues to contaminate our food and soils.
E-coli is only a problem if you don't embed yourself and your gut with as many other strains of various microbes as you possibly can. If you're HIV positive or immunocompromised, then for sure, wash your fresh food and everything else you ingest, for everybody else, don't worry about e-coli.
I don't know about Poland, but France has about ten times the food poising cases per year vs the US. That figure is total, but per capita. Most of the time e-coli isn't a big deal, but it can be.
I agree oil from machines isn't something you want either.
I use cabbage plants strategically placed, left to go to seed, all the snails hit onme them so you either watch or pick em up and throw them on the compost (or in the pond for the fish?) I heard comfrey leaves can serve the same purpose...
I'd agree that, in a teaching context, it's vital to have a consistant hardware / software experience - especially with beginner users, even different keyboard layouts are going to cause confusion. The Pi 400 is a great device, nice and compact - if you get the starter kit you just need to add a monitor / TV. That does somewhat assume someone has a bit of room, though - some space to plug in to what might be a shared TV. The really nice thing about Raspbian is that is does actually work on older laptops (with a couple of catches - no free Matlab), so, if you have an older laptop available and can spend a bit of time setting it up, you can give someone a very similar experience on a more all-in-one device.
