Kona Science Cafe Presents The Instrumented Farm

The growing availability of a variety of environmental sensors and the drastic cost reductions in computing and communication technologies are impacting agriculture. A few months ago, we heard from a Honolulu-based start-up company that is building software to integrate sensor data. This month, our presenter describes a home-grown Free and Open Source Software effort to do the same thing.

Kona resident Werner Thie is instrumenting his coffee farm with a number of different types of sensors. He is designing solar-powered sensor nodes using LoRa spread spectrum point to point (http://www.semtech.com/wireless-rf/) data radios and 3D printed enclosures. In this talk, he will explain why one would want to instrument farming, what one would do with all the data generated and present his system architecture.

Werner Thie is an electrical engineer trained way back in the seventies at University of Applied Science in Bern, Switzerland. Gathering cardiac electric data with the first 8bit processors available he never went back into his major field of microwave transmission but stayed in programming everything he could get his hands on and which can be programmed. In addition to developing his farm, he develops engineering software for a number of clients as well as his popular online card game platform for the Swiss game of Jass.

Agenda:

5:00-5:15 p.m. Gather and Networking
5:15-6:00 p.m. Presentation and Q&A
6:00-7:30 p.m. more networking, pupus