What we’re about
Do you have a passion for innovation, electronics and improving the planet? Help us explore and innovate in the emerging smart sensor, LoRa and big data for agriculture and natural resources. LoRa is an emerging standard for a LOw bandwidth long RAnge WAN - complementary to the 802.3 Ethernet and Wifi world but totally different with very different use cases. Technologies we use: Node-red event manager, ESP32 microcontrollers, MQTT messaging etc.
These meetings are best for people with a technical background but parts of the projects involve building things so someone not into coding but good with their hands is welcome too. If you have experience programming Arduino or any object oriented language you won't have any trouble.
At Can Picard - a farm member of the Alella Green Tech Alliance - we have a number of projects which you could get involved with:
::: Build a farm.bot gardening automation robot . involves assembling a machine, some knowledge or desire to learn arduino coding, 3D printing etc
::: Build a LoraWan infrastructure network for microfarms and wineries of the Maresme - We have just installed the first mega LoraWan antenna and now will focus on the smart sensors to instrument our fields and resources. The plan is to provide a big and local data service so that individual farmers can view parameters previously inaccessible to them (PH, humidity a depth, etc), and organizations can access the big data for trend analysis and disaster prevention. We need passionate techies that want to help save the world!
::: Design an IOT electric power station using water, gravity, sunlight, and your smarts! Goal is 1KW power from a 25 meter head. We have a water reservoir of 1 million litres. Come and help us build something cool!
::: Set up a lab for building cool things. There is already a good Dremel 3D printer and lots of equipment but also a budget to acquire digital microscopes etc. Come help us set up a lab to help save the planet!
::: Smart home project. A 400m2 house with over 5km of wiring allows for directly connecting all consumers and switches to a main home automation panel where cool things can be done via hardware and software. Come get involved in the DB schema, methodology for automation and experimenting with us.
::: Vines growing and wine making automation. Via smart sensors in the field and in the tanks, we´ll build a way to see parameters never seen in real time before (at least by us) and we´ll use node-red and other tools to automate the process.
Also there are many hands on projects that involves building something and then adding sensors. For example, I just completed and Amazon drop box using a large wine barrel. You can open it with a code to deliver your package. It is highly connected over MQTT etc so that I always know who is attempting to deliver or has just delivered a package.
HOW THIS WORKS
You let me know that you are interested and respond to individual meetings that I post but MAINLY just ping me when you have time to come and we´ll get you involved on a adhoc basis based on your interests and skills.
COSTS
Everyone is a volunteer and is here to learn a lot and also contribute. For those that come a lot and take on real project, we´ll provide expenses money for travel and free meals.
We are looking for people that feel like teaching a workshop in our newly created outdoorsclassroom. You suggest a topic. We will certainly be doing a pizza making one -- don´t worry we'll figure out how to make it techie..., Lora and LoraWAN intros, ESP32 programming etc. But there are a lot of real world projects to work on!
WHERE
In Alella, about 15-20 mins bus ride or car. Well connected by the Sagales E19 bus from Gran Via every 30 mins.
