Confirming Prototype Designs

After Venice’s largest flood in a decade and a weekend to unwind and explore some of the other islands within the Venetian Lagoon, the team began week two by meeting with our sponsors at SerenDPT in order to finalize the route we wanted to take towards achieving our project objectives. During our research throughout the previous seven weeks at WPI, our team had determined in our proposal that we wanted our goals to be centered around creating prototype systems for our sponsor to use in determining the final setup they wanted for their vertical growing system. Our sponsor has received a grant to be put towards educating local Venetians about soilless farming and intends to present a hackathon along with educational classes that will allow locals to come up with an overarching solution for implementing a hydroponic solution into the bell towers. This hackathon will use our prototypes as inspiration and guidance for these proposed solutions.

Ultimately, the course of action we discussed with our sponsors was to create two prototype systems. One system will be an in-ground farm that incorporates the use of the robotic system FarmBot, while the other system will be a custom design for a vertical, hydroponic farming solution made from recycled or organic materials such as bamboo and coconut coir. Some of the challenges presented in this process begin with the robotic system we wish to use. FarmBot is sold by a company based in California, so communication has been slow due to the time zone differences as we look to find a way to expedite shipping in order to have the system here before our term is complete. We have since purchased the system and hope to work on preparing for its arrival. The beauty of Farmbot is its ability to customize for research as it offers open source code, among many other features. As for the custom hydroponic system, using organic materials presents issues such as system decay and a potential for unknown variables due to a lack of prior testing so we will be basing our design off of previously established models in order to minimize these risks and also consulting with hydroponic professionals that SerenDPT has partnered with along the way.

As the week progressed, our group continued to research local produce in order to determine which would be the most suitable for hydroponic farming in Venice. We found local farmers markets and documented the produce available and the prices at which they were being sold. We hope to use this data to develop a proper cost-benefit analysis for the farming systems we will be putting in place.

Looking into next week, we hope to begin preparing for the arrival of FarmBot by creating a greenhouse environment for the system. Additionally, we hope to begin taking data on the climate of the bell tower within SerenDPT headquarters (H3) to determine what needs to be done to make it feasible for growing produce.