Hello gardenmeshers,

Sierk and I have been hard at work preparing various parts of the project for the Nat Geo grant and the East Bay Vivarium prototype roll out. A few updates from my end:

1. We have ~6 working prototypes (aka Garden Gnodes) thanks to the prototyping party last Sunday

2. We now have a way of remotely updating the scripts running on the Garden Gnodes via telnet (if interested check out this script)

3. With the help of Jake (from sudoroom), we also now have a few Garden Gnodes being **safely** powered by Li-Po batteries.

4. I recently procured some analog multiplexers so we should be able to test the light sensors soon.

5. The roll out at the East Bay Vivarium is planned for tomorrow at 9:30am, this should be as simple as setting up one of our peoplesopen.net routers, connecting it to their internet, and then plugging in the Garden Gnodes in their respective tanks.

I plan at being at the Omni most of this evening preparing at least five of the prototypes to be deployed at the Vivarium. This will involve flashing the NodeMCU firmware, uploading the gardenmesh Lua script, and checking that the remote update feature works correctly. If any one is interested in learning about the hardware/firmware side of the project feel free to stop by the Omni tonight (it's also weekly JavaScript night!).

I know there were a few people that came by this week interested in the project, but I do not have their emails. Mario, if you want to add them to this thread that would be great.

-grant

On Tue, Aug 8, 2017 at 12:04 AM, Bullitt Bourbon <bb@elleko.net> wrote:

hi-

l read this and also the e-mail you wrote to Divine, very nice work there. Some comments/ questions:

1. Some of the monologues are kind of infomercially. An example is cell 2: 'studies show that... the popularity of home gardening has increased substantially'. that's not really stuff one would say IRL. Maybe it's meant to suggest an ad-lib for similar content, just wanted to point it out, though. l can help with all that.

2. cell 2 - Definitely not an expert here, but often gardens have better performing and worse performing crops, right?
The images can match what is being narrated, from a poorly producing section when u talk about factory farming to a thriving section when u say 'what if we can grow more food...'

3. cell 3 - is this stock footage?

4. cell 5 - this is a good opportunity to show the actual device off. it can just pretend to be working. we can make a fake data screen and show it working on a phone. we can have infographics showing how it works as well, but since these things exist on the market, people already know about all that.

-BB


On 2017-08-07 19:44, Mario Gabiati wrote:

Hey I found this cool PDF report on home gardening in america, it's up
something like 20% in the last 5 years and it seems to be very popular
with young people.  Maybe we can rip some infographics out for the
video? Take a look and tell me what you think!  Thanks!

-MARIO

https://garden.org/special/pdf/2014-NGA-Garden-to-Table.pdf [4]

On Wed, Jul 26, 2017 at 1:16 AM, Mario Gabiati <mgabiati@gmail.com>
wrote:

1. Nat Geo Grant Video (please watch and comment)
2. Prototype party August 6th 4pm-8pm
3. Invitation to field test at East Bay Vivarium
4. Gardenmesh meetings every Tuesday 8p
_____________________Hello everyone,

First off, I'd like to thank all of you for your continued efforts
on this project. We have some exciting developments I'm excited to
update you on:

With major help from Adam, I've put together a crack at the 1-minute
submission for the National Geographic 'Chasing Genius' grant
(www.natgeochasinggenius.com [1]) due July 30th. I've chosen to
submit under the 'Feeding 9 Billion' focus. WATCH THE VIDEO HERE:

https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B1fJuy09hh37SlkyakdlVVgxdjQ/view?usp=sharing_eip&ts=59783ef0

[2]

We only have a few more days to make edits before I have to submit
so I am interested in hearing any suggestions you have! Not looking
for perfection, just want to get the point across.

Next, if you'd like to participate in BUILDING PROTOTYPES, we will
be hosting a prototype building party AUGUST 6TH 4-8PM at the
sudoroom hack space at the Omni Commons (4799 Shattuck Ave, Oakland,
CA 94609). No need to be an expert, we are all learning together
here. Thank you Grant for taking on the lions share of the soldering
and coding for this project, we couldn't do it without you!

If you are interested in getting more technical information on the
project, please visit our GITHUB WIKI
(https://github.com/sudomesh/gardenmesh/wiki [3]) - thank you Grant,
Jorrit, and Scott!

More good news: Sean Parnell from East Bay Vivarium has graciously
offered to let us test our first round of prototypes in their Wi-Fi
connected store. We will be able to test the units without solar
panels or batteries, or much housing so that we can hammer out the
software side of things and make upgrades for the exterior units
that we will be testing at Annie's Annuals in the fall (thank you
Cassandra!).

Lastly, if you are interested in getting more involved in the
project, we have gardenmesh meetings every Tuesday evening at 8pm at
the Omni Commons (4799 Shattuck Ave, Oakland, CA 94609).

Thank you!

-Mario Gabiati
GardenMesh Project Coordinator

Links:
------
[1] http://www.natgeochasinggenius.com
[2]
https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B1fJuy09hh37SlkyakdlVVgxdjQ/view?usp=sharing_eip&amp;ts=59783ef0
[3] https://github.com/sudomesh/gardenmesh/wiki
[4] https://garden.org/special/pdf/2014-NGA-Garden-to-Table.pdf

--
-Bullitt Bourbon