Preparing to getting started

“To copy others is necessary, but to copy oneself is pathetic.”

-Pablo Picasso

I want to start building a very simple grow-box with a water culture hydroponic system. This project pretty much explains the kind of grow-box which I intend to build and this page gives a nice overview on different types of hydroponic systems. Put together, I will need the following components for my grow-box:

• A box with a door and silver foil for covering the inside of the box
• Ventilation for the box
• A nutrition reservoir
• An air-pump
• An LED growing light
• A floating platform for growing the plants
• Strawberry seeds
• Nutritient solution
• Artificial soil (perlite, vermiculite)

So the first version of my grow-box should look a little bit like this:

Setting the bar

“If you don’t know where to go, it will be much harder for you to get there.”

–Fat Dragon

So let me try to explain what this blog is all about. I want to build a hydroponic indoor farm which I can use to grow strawberries. In this farm I want to install cameras and sensors, feed the data collected from these sensors to magic algorithms and thereby make the computer smart enough to take care of the precious strawberry plants.

You might be asking yourself – what on earth are hydroponics? Well, according to wikipedia it  “is a method of growing plants using mineral nutrient solutions, in water, without soil”. So no soil. Just the plants and some nutrient solution.

Your next question might be: why do you want to do it? The answer is quite simple: for fun.  I like tinkering, I like strawberries and hacking out things, so why not combine it.

To wrap it up, the goals of this project are:

1. Build a hydroponic farm that is independent from the sun
2. Install sensors in the hydroponic farm (temperature, humidity and cameras for now)
3. Use the data from the sensors to analyse the state of the plant ( plant’s health, growth stadium, carrying fruits ready for harvest, blossoming)