PlantHive joins the AVF’s Abattoir workshop on circular economics

PlantHive joins the AVF’s Abattoir workshop on circular economics

Our team took part in the Association for Vertical Farming workshop on circular economics. It was very interesting to see that a place such as the Anderlecht Abattoir making efforts to integrate rooftop aquaponic farms and underground mushroom farms in their business model. The workshop revolved around circular economics with the main focus being how to further develop the existing green-tech initiatives, as well as instigate new ones. Overall it was a very interesting experience, and allowed us to meet…

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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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Trip to Armenia

Trip to Armenia

Earlier this year, our team had the courtesy to be invited by our investor, Mr. Hakob Hakobyan, to pitch at his annual start-up event: Up-Start Init @the Mariott hotel, Yerevan, Armenia. Our team of choice for this event: Hadrien, Federico “Chicco”, and Vasileios. What we thought to be a pleasant and relaxing trip, turned out into a huge adventure. Things can get messy quick when transporting a showcase prototype so far across the globe. We were very concerned with giving…

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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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Crowdsourcing Week

Crowdsourcing Week

  One of the big challenges for a startup company is to find funding. Networking is something that helps in order to prove that, as a company, you have true potential to succeed into launching a successful product. The Crowd Sourcing Week was an event we attended in Brussels in order to get in touch with a few micro investors and even if, so far, it didn’t yield much, it was a good experience to practice our pitching. Apart from…

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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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