Mar
8
The Return of Online Grocers
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Ars Technica examines the second generation of internet grocery delivery services.
I have to question the wisdom of introducing a premium service of any sort in the midst of an economic recession[1]. I doubt we’ll ever see a service like this here in central PA, but anything that offers the promise of getting fresh, healthy food into the hands of Americans gets my hearty endorsement.
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1: I will believe we are out of the recession when the unemployment numbers return to saner levels and the job listings in the newspaper take up more than two pages.
Aug
1
EasyBloom Plant Sensor
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I deployed a new gadget in the garden Thursday evening: an EasyBloom Plant Sensor. It looks to be a partial solution to my automated garden thought piece from a few weeks ago, fulfilling the data collection step but not the instant updating requirement.
I’ll probably pull it in and retrieve the monitoring data later tonight. I’ll share a more thorough review once I’ve been using it for a while.
Jun
25
Notes Toward an Automated Garden
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I’m following Pothos on Twitter. I’m fascinated by the idea of the Botanicalls kit. In particular, I’m interested in its possible application to my garden. To that end, I’ve outlined a three-phase plan to fully automate watering my garden.
Phase one:
A Botanicalls unit networked over wifi, powered by solar power and enclosed in an all-weather box, emails me when the garden needs to be watered.
Phase two:
Addition of rechargeable battery pack to box to enable nighttime watering. Addition of automatic sprinkler system. Botanicalls sends commands to start and stop watering as needed.
Phase three:
Addition of weather report module. Before activating sprinkler, queries NOAA report and parses data to determine if rain is likely in the next 24 hours. If it will rain, watering is postponed.
This is obviously a work in progress, but that is what I am ultimately envisioning. I’m sure there are commercial systems out there — in fact, I have seen them — but I’m also sure they can’t beat a DIY system on price or sheer enjoyment of building something.
