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Author: Vasileios Vallas

PlantHive goes @Hack Belgium

PlantHive goes @Hack Belgium

Last month we participated in the “Hack Belgium 2017” venue. The event assembled more than 1000 participants and visitors, and consisted in workshops looking to solve Belgium’s everyday problems by using the hottest up-and coming technologies: Artificial Intelligence, Virtual Reality, Blockchain, Internet of Things, etc. We were invited by the 3D printing Guru, Deepak Metha, and had the chance to showcase our product in the experience room. We shared the stage with a lot of very interesting projects from various…

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Hacking tomatoes

Hacking tomatoes

“Should I go for hydroponics or a classic soil-based substrate for my plants?”; “does hydroponics really make a difference?”; are both questions we get a lot from our friends and followers. Legend has it that hydroponics is faster, more efficient in regards to water consumption, and yields more results than soil. Legend also has it that soil-grown fruits and vegetables have more taste. We decided to provide concrete answers by making a case study for both systems. For our experiment,…

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3D printing our Alpha units

3D printing our Alpha units

3D printing is a very interesting technology that offers rapid prototyping capabilities to start-up projects, and enables DIYers to build their own tools and toys! But be aware, 3D printing is not an easy nor a cheap hobby! Usually 3d printer represents an investment of €1000 – €2000, but if you seriously get into it, you will be able to build your own mind-blowing customized objects at home! For our 3D printer we went for the BCN3D Sigma from the…

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Prototyping Raspberry Pi – What we learned so far !

Prototyping Raspberry Pi – What we learned so far !

Since we used the Raspberry Pi for the first few iterations of our prototyping, we thought it would be nice to talk about the background of the device and share what we learned so far, especially for those among you who are not familiar with it.   The Raspberry pi is a series of single board computers developed in the early 2010s’. The first generation of RPis, the legendary model B, was released by the Raspberry Pi Foundation in 2012….

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Our feasibility study with Sirris

Our feasibility study with Sirris

Hello everybody! We are proud to announce that we collaborated with the research center Sirris on the feasibility study of our Internet of Things greenhouse. Sirris is the leading research center of the Belgian industry, that helps companies develop and effectively implement technological innovations. We were offered the possibility to collaborate with their experts and engineers, as well as have access to their state-of-the-art infrastructure. We have been maintaining very good relations with Sirris since the very beginning of our…

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Our laser-cut functional prototype

Our laser-cut functional prototype

After a long period of tinkering, decision making, prototyping, re-prototyping, failing, succeeding, drawing, making 3ds, soldering electronics, and so on; we are proud to announce that we are getting closer to a product design that will integrate all of the features we initially planned to include in our food-computers. We had to see this as a necessary step of prototyping, where we put drawing board away and artistic pencils down and developed a first version to be released. We wanted…

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Our prototyping so far

Our prototyping so far

After having built our first few automated food-computers, we felt the need to share the valuable lessons we have learned from our experience. Growing crops hydroponically is a challenging task, but with a little bit of know-how, it can yield impressive results.  Here’s what we learned from our first trials: First of all, the strength and spectrum of your LED grow-lights plays a major role when it comes to yields. Therefore, when it comes to choosing grow-lights, one must make…

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Prototyping our LED Panels 

Prototyping our LED Panels 

Hello everybody! We’ve been through a lot of prototyping so far, especially on hardware and electronics, but the most visually-striking one is about to start! Hop on board this journey on how we managed to create LED panels that are now vastly superior to the industry standard. At the start we ordered some ready-made LED panels that had a nice design and decent specs. However, these turned out to be worthless when it comes to growing plants. This led us…

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Hello World!

Hello World!

Hello world! We are PlantHive, a team of technology enthusiasts that decided to come together and try to find solutions for tomorrow’s problems. The way we see things, a sustainable and stable food supply is going to play a crucial role in the future of our cities. We thus decided to create a new project in which we aim in merging plants and machines. We are a multicultural, multilingual and multidisciplinary team looking to be part of the next agricultural…

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