My name is Aidan Chandra and I’m a high school senior at Woodside Priory in Northern California. The inspiration for this project came from my research into the blossoming AgTech movement and the need for advanced sensing in my high school’s garden. I learned about the technology used by large-scale farms and Agribusinesses. The solutions are expensive and, in many cases, poorly integrated. However, the data they are able to collect has resulted in fascinating improvements in farming techniques and for crop yield. I thought I could develop affordable miniaturized versions of some of these sensors. That’s what sprouted GardenSense.
I first implemented pre-1.0 versions of the GardenSense sensors at my school. Our AP Environmental Science teacher is the head of sustainability for the school’s Franklin Garden where we grow plants, fruits, and vegetables. I approached him with the GardenSense concept in the summer of 2017 and he was very receptive. Thus far, we have involved one of my Comp Sci teachers as well as the irrigation company that supports Franklin Garden. Last year, a student used my sensors to monitor water usage at our school and used the data to cut down on overwatering. We have plans to continue finding ways to make Franklin Garden more bountiful.
I decided to open-source the project to accelerate adoption. My hope is for a community of like-minded local farmers, home-gardeners, and engineers to come together and contribute best practices and improvements to the technology.
All of the schematics and resources provided allow people to build their own GardenSense units and I plan to offer assembled units for sale in small-runs by mid-2019. A complete user software suite is scheduled for beta release in early 2019, which is also when some sample units will be available for test users. Around the same time, forum functionality will be added to this website to help build the community.
Whatever the size or scope of your growing, I wish you the best of luck.
Please contact me at aidanchandra@gmail.com with any design improvements, sample and feature requests, ideas for next versions, or just about any feedback - I’d love to hear!
You can find a one-page history of my inventions here.