UrbanAg BKK -- Organic Building Material

March 21, 2015 -- Helios Labs Making growing beds and other structures out of bamboo really isn't all that revolutionary. Neither is growing some bamboo nearby to use as a construction material, though it may not often be employed for urban agriculture.

The concept of using biological systems to produce building material onsite may has some revolutionary implications however, if we consider engineered organisms or artificial bioreactos designed specifically to create efficient, biological building materials. We'll be attempting to produce a prototype ecosystem combining high-tech monitoring and automation systems with organic, urban agriculture, with the addition of biological building materials.

Raspberry Pi Urban Agriculture TweetBot Monitoring System

We're using an Anitech IR 160 USB webcam. 

March 5, 2015 -- Helios Labs We're building an automated urban agricultural project, with at least one garden on the rooftop, and an indoor LED-lit project similar to our already successful indoor aquaponics system (recently just moved).

The project will include a means to monitor and even control it online using Twitter among other applications. It will include the following features:

1. TweetBot to automatically tweet pictures of the garden several times a day.
2. TweetBot to automatically tweet water level and soil moisture data at least once a day.
3. The ability to water plants and feed fish remotely.
4. The ability to take pictures on command remotely.

For now, we have the TweetBot automatically uploading pictures of the system several times a day. Here's how we did it. If you make it through this tutorial, you'll be able to add on other features. To make this TweetBot, we've used a Raspberry Pi B+ (RPi).

Making a TweetBot tweet pictures of the garden several times a day.

1. Setting up Raspberry Pi: We downloaded the Rasbian .zip file found on Raspberry Pi's official website, unzipped it, and used Win32 Disk Imager to put it on our mini SD card. We placed the SD card into our Raspberry Pi B+ and followed the instructions in setting up the desktop. Raspberry Pi's official website has a help section full of links showing you the absolute basics, in case you get stuck.

Follow this guide to help you download an OS and put it on your SD card for installing on your RPi.

We also did some practice using the terminal and even setting up a way to wirelessly control it using a laptop within the same network (same room using the same WiFi connection). A good tutorial showing these steps can be found here.

UrbanAg BKK Update :: March 3, 2015

March 3, 2015 -- Helios Labs Our aquaponics prototype has been successfully moved to our new location on the 5th floor of a nearby building. Unfortunately the ferrocement tank couldn't be moved with it (it's way too heavy) so for now a plastic bin has been used as a stand-in until a more permanent solution can be found. The ferrocement tank won't go to waste though. It's now serving as a planter on ground level outside our building.

The lights and auto-fish feeder are up and running and a Raspberry Pi has been tasked with taking pictures several times a day and uploading them to Twitter so we can check in on our system no matter where we are. We used this tutorial to make that happen. You can check out the Twitter feed here via @UrbanAgBKK.

Additionally, we've begun working on a soil moisture sensor. So far it is a simple LED display letting you know basically if its moist, semi-moist, or totally dry and it works pretty good. We made it following this tutorial on Instructables. You might want to add in some resistors to protect your LEDs and your Arduino.

UrbanAg BKK

February 18, 2015 -- Helios Labs We announced not too long ago about our plans to make a "CityFarm" in Bangkok. It was inspired by MIT's CityFarm project, but apparently the name "City Farm" is very common and already being used by a group in Bangkok.

So we're now going with "UrbanAg BKK" and we've also got some progress to report. We bought and set up a Raspberry Pi B+ (from Home of Maker, Fortune IT Mall). The same night we crashed through the process of using Twython to create automated tweets through our new @UrbanAgBKK account (using this tutorial here). You can see by looking at our timeline, the measured input it was automatically reporting (every minute) was the CPU temperature of our Raspberry Pi.

The next step will be capturing and tweeting images using a webcam. Then, once the rooftop garden is being set up, it will begin sending images specifically of that project. For people interested in following the project, it will be useful for them. But more importantly, it will be useful for us because we'll be able to monitor and literally see it no matter where we are. Eventually we plan on making it a two-way process, where it is sending us data automatically and we are able to send it input over the Internet as well.

Back to the name, UrbanAg BKK,we didn't want to limit it to just rooftops. The original aquaponics prototype we've automated is entirely indoors. The city is an intricate labyrinth of alleys, balconies, rooftops, and odd spaces of all kinds. Filling unused or underused space with agriculture is appealing for many people for so many reason. Where would you build an urban garden? 

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