The Plant Pirate

[miznitch]

Hello,

I wanted to share a project that takes Home Assistant to the farm. Below is an abstract of a project we will present at the World Potato Congress in Kenya this October.

The entire ethos of Home Assistant and related projects applies to laboratories, greenhouses and smaller agricultural enterprises as much as to the home. We welcome any comments, feedback and suggestions.

The entire point of our project is to start a conversation in the agricultural sector of East Africa about data sovereignty and autonomy.

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Open-source automated temporary immersion bioreactors for potato seed multiplication

Mitch D. Day, Eyob Mizan Tesfay
Imizi Umubano, Rwanda
Abstract

We present a working prototype of an automated Temporary Immersion Bioreactor (TIB) built entirely on open-source software, commodity hardware and common household items. A bare minimum of specialty components are needed, most of which can be found at any larger urban medical clinic. The system is built upon Home Assistant (HASS), a mature open-source platform governed by the Open Home Foundation, an independent nonprofit built to assure long-term independence. We are guided by the ethos of eliminating unnecessary 'middle-man' costs while building stable agricultural automation systems that cannot be disrupted by third-party decisions beyond the growers control.

The system automates immersion and air-exchange cycles, real-time sensor monitoring via a local dashboard, CO2 injection, and can be quickly adapted and expanded. Total hardware cost is a fraction of commercial equivalents, with the added advantage that once a system is built and optimized for a given operation, the system will remain stable indefinitely with only routine maintenance.

A live physical demonstration including four operating TIB vessels, sensors, pumps, and a Home Assistant dashboard will be presented. All configuration files and hardware specifications are freely available. The system and all customization are permanently owned by the operator. No vendor can withdraw support or make unexpected changes.

This is a research-scale system built in Rwanda. With minor hardware modifications, especially a larger power supply and higher capacity air pumps, this exact configuration and system architecture can drive a commercial-scale micro-propagation operation.

Our intent with this project is to demonstrate a method for automating agricultural operations in accessible ways that do not require third party vendors. We focus on temporary immersion bioreactors with this project, but the same system can automate large scale agricultural operations in greenhouses or across large areas of open field and even across discontinuous parcels.