Detroit residents are becoming more and more interested in urban farming. With this growth in interest has come a growth in desired farm scale.  Many home gardens have grown to the point where they include hoop houses to extend the growing season.  These hoop houses can be constructed on a limited budget with found materials.  The hoop houses, along with careful record-keeping, can turn a hobby garden into a veritable small business.

Part of the farming practices necessary to extended-season growing includes monitoring soil temperature and other environmental conditions.  Many large-scale commercial farms benefit from sophisticated sensor equipment, but no commercial options exist for small-scale urban farming operations.  Keeping with Detroit’s tinkerer tradition, the Mt. Elliott Makerspace wants to create a homebrew sensor that can be easily produced to fill the growing need for environmental monitoring.

Organizations like Earthworks and the Mt. Elliott Makerspace see the garden sensors as both a useful tool and a conversation-starter.  The devices fulfill a concrete need in people’s everyday work and also show that it’s possible to solve problems in a creative way with accessible technology.

Community members at Mt. Elliott Makerspace are researching ways to combine the garden sensors with mesh network systems to send sensor data to the internet.  These sensors could also function as community wireless nodes.  The sensors can extend coverage of the wireless networks to additional households and enable more Detroiters with access to the internet.

Many low-cost wireless hubs (like the Fonera and some linksys products) have the capability to attach additional devices directly to their boards via unused I/O or USB ports.  The Mt. Elliott Makerspace wants to research these possibilities and prototype units to deploy in the Earthworks and Brother Nature urban community farms.

This project will tie in to other open-source/free-software projects that also use the Arduino and Open-Mesh platforms.  All of the software produced in the project will be presented and archived on a public website for others to use and improve.

Project Details

Project url: 

http://blog.mtelliottmakerspace.com

Project image: 

Supporting organization: 

Capuchin Soup Kitchen

Project Social Media Links: 

Ben's Blog

OmniCorpDetroit, the local hackerspace

Locations