Hi Taylor, brilliant video and fantastic ethos, for sharing your ideas and developments. I am a UK arable farming, looking to develop a solar powered autonomous robot, similar to your creation. My ideas are along a regenerative route, to grow ‘everyday’ commercial crops without the use of fertilizers or sprays. I would be very interested in collaborating with your Acorn design to adapt it to be of use to every arable farmer worldwide. As a farmer of over 40 years, we are now at the most exciting times to undo, the damage we have done however, I will need your help. Kind regards H.
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Where are you in the UK? I’m near Bristol and have tentative plans to build one of these soonish: 50% scale version of Acorn? - #4 by sam_uk
Hi Sam, I am in Dorset, I am an all arable farmer, looking to build a autonomous solar powered robot to carry out activities to reduce my use of sprays and fertilizer. The idea is simple however, I need help on the electrics and communication. I am working with my son who can only supply limited amount of time. I would be very happy to come and see you to develop an idea, hopefully collaboratively?
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Good to make a UK connection. I’ll be down near Southampton with not much to do on 28th 29th Dec. I could drive over for a couple of hours if that suits?
The mounting of the forks/steering motors seems to be the main outstanding bit for 50% scale version of Acorn? - #4 by sam_uk
Then I just need to find ~£3k to put it together and find out which bits don’t work.
Hi Sam, I have one meeting on the 29th at 10am for one hour. We are building a small robot for proof of principle, with an aim to a field trial by the 1st March. At what stage are you at?
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I’ve built some small field bots to play with, worked on some software a bit.
My conclusion is that it’s worth just copying Taylors hardware & software stack rather than re-doing that work.
Good afternoon in Texas! I am currently in a design class in West Texas and I am tasked to create a soil moisture measurement robot. I am very interested in the design of Acorn. The adaptability and versatility of Acorn makes it a great platform for this project. Is there a contact that I can keep in touch with for questions over the coming months. Thank you for your pursuit in improving the farming experience for all!
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Hi to everybody,
First, a big thanks to @taylor for all the effort running the project and the community building.
I am Stefan from the north-eastern part of Germany. I live on a small project farm and maintain several workshops here.
Others run the vegetable production for ourselfs and selling.
https://www.landkombinat.org/
I am active in open source agriculture projects since more than a decade now.
I developed and built juice processing equipment, modern tools for draft horses, solar and wind systems and much more, mostly together with other people or groups.
Right now, I am diving into the Agrokruh project in Slovakia, which exists since more than 30 years now, but unfortunately it is not spreading.
https://www.agrokruh.sk/en/technologia/
I plan a visit there this year and like to build one (looking for partners right now).
Some development from Acorn can be uses there as well, especially tools with camera based plant recognition.
I am good with CAD, electronics, fabrication and repair and have manufacturing equipment for all kinds of metal work. Also a electronic workshop, 3D printing and a wobbly CNC-mill here on the farm.
At another workshop I have access to industrial turning-milling machine, 3kw laser cutting and welding and even an injection molding machine.
I see the perspective to manufacture parts for open source projects like Acorn.
Either to provide it for people but also for development and prototyping.
Let me know if I can help out with making parts or engineering details of the project.
I saw some OS agriculture projects and groups growing and shrinking, like OpenSourceEcology Germany & US, FarmHack and the German group around Agrocircle.
Some developed great, like https://www.preciousplastic.com/
I think maintaining a community is the hardest part. Without people and supporters most good ideas will disappear, especially when it is in the physical/agricultural world.
I don’t want good ideas like agrobots to vanish neither seeing it in the hands of big companies with closes sources.
I wonder how the Acorn project status is right now.
I saw you moved away from Twisted Fields Research Collective - Open Collective
For a certain reason?
It would be interesting and possible here to build one. I was busy with organic vegetable production for some years, so I can see the needs.
Some field testers are needed and a active making & testing community.
If any interested people from my area read this: please contact me.
All the Best
Stefan
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