Project Concept¶
“Key Objective for me to join Fab Lab is to find solution for eradicating homelessness issue from planet earth.”
“As a homeless person they have many challenges ranging from basic survival needs like food, shelter, water to more wider social problems and inclusion back into society. Not going into statistics but a simple wikipedia search tells the story Wiki Homeless. It’ not that people are not working on this so why is that we still have so many problems in this world. Check out World Economic Forum Sustainability Development Goals .Fundamentally if you ask me the very economy is eating up this planet. Most of the human energy is wasted in greed and making money. Not agreeing well read world wealth distribution report where mere 1% of people in this world hold 45% of world weatlh. global-inequality-facts. So clearly economy is more important than people well being. Their are many reasons for it but one of the root cause is our education system which is turning Genius of human potential to mere Intellect and finally into dumb idiots running around for survival (i have been their already, just trying to reverse that process). Research by Nasa not just my thoughts Education System Dumbs Us
Getting Started - My focus area for Fab Lab project¶
Now clearly Fab lab is a 6 months diploma which has weekly assignment so its not possible to eradicate homelessness issue in these 6 months. So i have decided to divide this problem into various sub domains and build a working prototype for one sub domain using digital fabrication tools.
Key problems for a homeless person
- Basic Survival needs like Food, Shelter, Basic Amenities like toilet
- Job
- Health
- Education and skill Development
- Identity
- Financial Inclusion
- Power source
- Access to machines to build solutions
“I decided to work on Basic Survival needs i.e. Shelter & Food , Coming from IT background i had no clue on Digital fabrication or even how to grow my own food. So to learn that i did lot of search on google, instructables and earlier year students projects to draw some inspiration. So came to know about Hydroponics, Aquaponics, Zero budget natural farming and tonns of material online. Clearly, i was not the first one to try! Googling led me to attend a workshop on Urban Farming on 19th and 20th Jan 2019 a 2 day intensive urban farming course (luckily in Delhi near my place, some cool snaps in Week1) where i learnt the basics of urban farming. Workshop taught me around composting,sapling process, pest control, seed selection, preparing soil, sowing seeds and saplings, Harvesting crop, weed management, Organic fertilisers with tonns of hand on demo. That’s why it was intense :). So backed with knowledge i am ready to “Grow My Own Food”.”
Project Idea 1, Build MIT Open Agriculture Food Computer¶
Project Idea 2, Build Shelter 2.0¶
Project Idea 3, Hydroponic Farm¶
Image credits from Instructables
Alexa enabled custom PCB for automatic water dripping system with sensors like Ph Level, Temperature etc.
Image credits from Instructables
My Final Project Name : Annadanam [The offering of food]¶
I have taken this name from india ancient culture. We indians owe our spiritual wealth not just to the sages, seers, masters and enlightened beings who walked the path, but also to the community that nurtured them. In our tradition, serving people was of utmost importance. In fact for many, this was a path in itself. The most beautiful expression of this was the Annadanam, the offering of food. I am planning to build a food computer and can’t find more appropriate name than this. It showcase our culture which focussed on inner wellbeing and not external wellbeing, which is founded on the principle of giving and not on wealth.
So what are the key outcomes i am looking to get out of this project. At the end i should be able to showcase following things.
- Design my own frames and pots for planting seeds, saplings on my rooftop
- Fabricate some farming tools like plastic marking for plant name, compost bin
- Build an automatic water dripping system for irrigation using custom PCB
- Build a smart irrigation IoT system based on sensors data like temperature, moisture etc.
- Integration of voice enabled IoT device like Alexa to control my devices
- Monitor and control my devices using mobile app
- Add Machine learning and deep learning solution to manage weeds, pest (if time permits)
How I will be leveraging Fab Lab Machines to Build the solution¶
- CNC, Laser Cutting for creating the framework
- Moulding and casting for various pots and frames
- Electronics assignments for the PCB design and manufacturing
- Various input , output devices for capturing sensors data
- WiFi and bluetooth connectivity for Cloud IoT and Alexa
- 3d Printing for desiging frame for electronics
Key Challenges¶
- Time , as i work part time so its crucial for me to manage
- Electronics i have tried arduino, raspberry pi but i have no soldering and custom board making experience