What is your favorite piece of tech in your grow? What is the most technical piece of hardware/software that you utilize?
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My brain first then the remote vacuum system. Couldn’t get along without them!
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I wish I could say brain first. My digital notebooks instead of paper. Everything is on my azure account at Microsoft, encrypted.
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We’ve got some grows using raspberry-pi for automating the hardware (sensors + relays) and we’ve deployed some e-paper displays as panels outside the grow-rooms along with a status-dashboard on a chromecast+tv
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A raspberry is an ideal solution with the relay hat. You could control Sixteen points add in a DP panel to go from 5 volts to 220.
The hassle is you are writing code and maintaining code. The question is what business are the growers working?
I love to follow a project using a raspberry.
Do use one of the drag and drop code generators for the Pi or you coding?
Why, epaper? And what type of epaper? I would think a water proof digital paper would be more cost effective. If I was a bigger grower RF readers and task codes linked to the RF reader pin codes. Pump the time recording data into my accounting system. I would use either the Canadan or the Cheklosovkian solution
2N access control. I have used this product all over the place. I can export the access data to any platform without much work. We had 1000’s of them at AON on a refit. They were unhackable and bullet proof. They just worked.
From the voices in my head Ethan
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What remote vacuum did you pick?
From the voices in my head Ethan
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Update please. Your project sound fun.
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Great Thread! My favorite tech is my spreadsheet! I keep an excel sheet with nutriten/water/height day and a variety of other notes and metrics so I can evaluate variances over time. Not to mention I am watering less! And have been able to reduce my electrical costs. At the end of the day ANYtech (doesn’t matter what industry) needs to outperform the human labor cost in order to be effective. Thus I see this as my best ROI cause it’s constantly providing me feedback!
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You hit parts of the key check out the new threads I started yesterday.
We need to collect data by weeks and the batch and take all that data and feed it back into quickbooks you will need a slight addition to the chart of accounts.
The real issue is turning data points into metrics. KPI become KPM.
The real challenge and makes a bigger impact is consistsy from batch to batch. This becomes a very standard PMI problem. Lot of people study just this and how to manage it on a bigger scale.
From the voices in my head Ethan 
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@ethan do you know who is studying this in this industry? What companies/ organizations? Contacts ? I’m looking for those people ! 
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Are you in Canada? If yes, and you can give me a citizenship path and a metiod to finish my bucket list. Otherwise a pair of socks.
The answer is no one is actively studying this line. You may interlibrary loan my masters thesis. 1989, greenhouse order processing systems. The key formula are in the code. The project does not really deal with order management. It was a paper on how to write custom computer languages to achieve productivity optimization. The underlying database is a btrieve data base. I was working on DB2 beta 1 version but, at the time queueing theory and game theory where leading me in a different direction.
At the time a very complex mathematical formulas needed to be all written in assembly language and I was not going to do it for a masters. If I was going to use queue and game theory in glasshouses. I wanted to take pest to prededitor models and create an IPM model. Biological control was just starting to take off.
The issue is technology has changed in four very useful areas.
- Relational databases have matured.
DB2 for a window server under 2k - Outstanding project management software exists for example MS project for under 1k
- Changes in queueing and game theory have occurred
- Quickbooks gives me a good target for under $500
- Bonus, I don’t have to buy any hardware. I would run my management on Azure software on azure. Only buy the computer time above my mean on special occasions.
The group out of Colorado with the Salesforce based product have the right idea the just need a floricultuist to show them the math. I am posting as much of the math as possible.
All the formulas in queueing and game theory have to be converted from a people friendly polynomial to a Lagrange polynomial form. Easier to write set theory using an Lagrange format when using a relational model of structured quory language (SQL) IBM, Oracle and Microsoft are the big players. I like all three products. But, IBM has the best science run using there type of nested set models.
PM me and I will share the land scape. The people who know the best are reaching retirement or have retired. At most it could cost you is a phone call and a pair of socks
I am retired from big tech for heath reasons, but after working in both floricultue and it I have developed a very strange set of tools.
The book that is 1/2 the solution is Joe Celko’s Trees and Hierarchies in SQL for Smarties
3 three other books have the rest of the information to create an end to end solution. There are 6 new books in queueing theory since I last read one. 4 books on game theory. And any book in Capability Maturation Model level 5.
The starting point on Growers Network is the Schema for data modeling in glasshouse production. 
I posted it today. It is a work in process, but free. It is a hard mathematical model, but there are a lot of applied Mathematicens in the world from top drawer drawer schools who can do this math on the back of a napkin. I have to take my favorite to lunch to get the half day of time I need.
Thank you for the compliment
From the voices in my head.
Ethan
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