GardenBot!

Creator Andrew Frueh writes:

GardenBot is an open source garden monitoring system … The ultimate goal of the GardenBot project is to be a complete garden monitoring and automation system. A key design consideration is to keep everything as easy as possible -- especially for users new to Arduino and DIY electronics projects.

Hacking together electronics is one of my favorite pastimes -- there is always something new to learn. In mixing small scale farming and electronics, I've struggled to find a project that gives back more than it takes from the environment. If I make an automatic watering timer, does this save more than it costs? Will it pay back the environmental damage associated with extracting the raw materials to build it? Will it fix as much carbon as was released to generate the electricity to manufacture the device? I am ignorant of the environmental trade-offs of small scale urban and suburban farming, and know even less about the trade-offs for building electronics to automate them. I am, however, convinced of one thing: making farming appeal to hackers and geeks will create a community of innovators and hobbyists. This community will drive open source product development, and provide a testing ground for new products to help make personal and small scale farming less intensive in terms of time, money, and resources, and perhaps even entertaining.