UNO Mavericks ISQA - Build and Implementation of OpenAg Food Computer. This is the project site of the ISQA-8086/4000 - Internet of Things, Big Data and The Cloud class.
This class is a service learning engagement project/class between University of Nebraska (UNO) and Omaha Public School's (OPS) King Science Middle School. The instructor for this class is Dr. Sachin Pawaskar (UNO) and from the OPS side is Mrs. Hollie Cotten and Mrs. Cathryn Skoumal. Please visit OPS Student and Teacher site for updates and progress on this project.
The Build for the Food Computer was done with significant contribution from a close friend of mine Jay Stark, who is an amazing guy when it comes to innovative building, making and future thinking.
The project would not have been possible without the significant support from the Service Learning folks at UNO's Service Learning Academy, including Julie Dierberger, Angie Carlton, among others. Please visit Service Learning Academy site for updates and progress on this project.
The purpose of this class and service learning engagement with OPS King Science Middle School are the following.
- Get more students especially female students involved in STEM, given that today only 27% of the scientists and engineers in the U.S. workforce are women. Hence the collaboration with Hollie/Cathryn because girl students tend to gravitate towards female teachers and have more female teachers as role models.
- Encourage service learning for College students and tie their learning to a community engagement activity.
- Encouraging an interest in STEM is important in K-12 schools, it is a local, state and national priority.
- Ignite enthusiasm by making STEM learning interactive and fun.
- Increase the level of interest in farming and agriculture in Nebraska and the US, given that only 2% of the total US population is involved in agriculture today.
The OpenAg Food Computer was build based upon the MIT Open Agriculture Initiative.
Why Food Computer? - See this great TED Talk by Caleb Harper, director of the Open Agriculture Initiative at the MIT Media Lab.
Here are some useful links for this project.
- Build a Food Computer
- OpenAg Wiki
- Personal Food Computer 2.0
- GitHub Repository for Personal Food Computer 2.0
- GitHub Repository for OpenAgInitiative
- OpenAg Forum
- UNO - Omaha Mavericks Food Computer 2.0 - Forum
The Build of Food computer 2.0 can be broadly classified into Hardware and Software Set-up. Hardware Set-up involves fabricating the entire module to create a controlled-environment for the plants to be grown. Software Set-up involves installing the brain and all the necessary modules to control the hardware components inorder to achieve the required simulation. The complete guide to building a Food Computer is given below:
Thank you for considering contributing to the UNO Maverick's OpenAg Food Computer 2.0 project! The contribution guide can be found in the link.
The Build for the Food Computer was done with significant contribution from a close friend of mine Jay Stark, who is an amazing guy when it comes to innovative building, making and future thinking.
The OpenAg Food Computer 2.0 parts were sourced as a kit from OpenAgricultureSupply. I would like thank Ian McEachern for his contunued support. Here is an executive summary provided by Ian about Open Agriculture Supply.
The UNO Maverick's OpenAg Food Computer 2.0 is an open-sourced software licensed under the MIT license.
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