IRC logs for #farmOS, 2018-10-25 (GMT)

2018-10-24
2018-10-26
TimeNickMessage
[00:35:06]* alexheiss[m] has joined #farmos
[00:39:51]<alexheiss[m]>HI folks, I would just like to introduce myself. I am beginnning to learn about FarmOS after working with the owner of Essex Farm in upstate NY. https://essexfarmcsa.com/about-us/ The owner of the farm is quite enthusiastic about improving his practices/farm, and has been working with various programs to bring internet/connectivity to some sensors and stuff. So, just wanted to say 'Hi!'. I found FarmOS during some
[00:39:51]<alexheiss[m]>researchand am just starting to play around with it. Drupal is new to me, but I've been in Software Engineering/Ecommerce for over 15 years so can pick up things pretty quick. I've cloned the recommended fork, got a site up with farmier and am setting up my local env now. Excited to see what I find :)
[00:45:34]<alexheiss[m]>My partner dealt with all the Layer1 and Layer2 deployment at farm (had to redo it since prior implementation was not great/beneficial). I did end up burying some cables to the AP's but I'd rather go back to Layer 7 and farmOS looks promising avenue.
[00:47:11]<alexheiss[m]>Here was a story about it all on an NPR channel. http://www.wamc.org/post/senator-schumer-tours-farm-explore-link-between...
[00:54:41]<alexheiss[m]>Given my Ecommerce background, I have plenty of experience with distributed systems, web frameworks, amazon tech, streaming/event based systems, MVC systems, DB's, Inventory management, Order Management (600 orders/second at peak) , particuar familiarity with large scale logistics, last mile delivery, stock management, state machines, many other things. FarmOS looks impressive.
[06:08:46]<alexheiss[m]>Has anyone heard of Farm Beats?
[06:11:17]<alexheiss[m]>https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/research/project/farmbeats-iot-agriculture/ ??
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[06:32:05]<alexheiss[m]>Apologize if this is the wrong forum to ask, but regarding sensors - do people have a general recommendation for a particular brand? Do sensors follow some known protocol? Are there many protocals? Is RS-232 really that standard and would FarmOS support receiving data from sensors supporting RS-232? For example, it appears something like Vegetronix soil moisture sensor, can connect to it's a proprietry 'Vegehub' to
[06:32:05]<alexheiss[m]>transmit data wirelessly. Id' prefer if I could save money and build an adapter to push that sensor's data to something like FarmOS via some sort of cheaper hardware. Assuming FarmOS supports time series data of a sensor.... (still learning and reading up on FarmOS). Running the sensor, reading (possibly interpreting?) it's data, and reporting back in some normalized format, be available knowledge?
[06:50:22]<alexheiss[m]>The Farm Sensor Listener is pretty neat. Perhaps its SDI-12 between sensor and a controller, seem accurate? The controller then post to listener rest endpoints?
[07:22:31]<mstenta[m]>Hi @alexheiss:matrix.org !
[07:22:43]<mstenta[m]>Welcome to #farmOS
[07:23:39]<mstenta[m]>@donblair:matrix.org: is working on some interesting monitoring electronics
[07:23:42]<alexheiss[m]>Thanks Michael, great to hear from you. I am excited about how I can help FarmOS, and how FarmOS could help a local farmer.
[07:24:23]<mstenta[m]>You might be interested in talking with him
[07:24:42]<mstenta[m]>Great! Yea happy to have you part of the conversations!
[07:25:08]<alexheiss[m]>Very cool, I will try to reach out to him. I just wrapped up one sensor wired up to AWS CloudWatch for alerting, then notice FarmOS has an alerting platform, very cool!!!
[07:25:18]<mstenta[m]>I won't be around today much... Rented a wood splitter so I'll be outside all day
[07:25:53]<mstenta[m]>Yea! So farmOS has a simple listener module that basically just opens up endpoints to post data to via http
[07:26:11]<alexheiss[m]>I think it was Henry Ford who said, 'Wood will heat you twice' hehehe
[07:26:35]<alexheiss[m]>How many cord to split?
[07:26:38]<mstenta[m]>It's a general solution that works pretty well, but my thought is that additional modules could be written for more specific/specialized cases
[07:27:03]<mstenta[m]>Haha yea I hope so... It's chilly this morning :-)
[07:27:08]<mstenta[m]>35 here now
[07:27:37]<mstenta[m]>(°F)
[07:27:48]<mstenta[m]>(that's not so chilly in °C)
[07:28:22]<mstenta[m]>I've heard of Farm Beats but I don't know much about it
[07:29:01]<alexheiss[m]>You'd like modules to interpret particular vendor protocal?
[07:29:25]<alexheiss[m]>Or like some sort of normalization from many vendor to FarmOS model?
[07:30:06]<alexheiss[m]>Or module per type of sensor?
[07:32:53]<alexheiss[m]>Since I'm responsible to be sure internet connectivity/wifi is working at the farm, I wrote a monitor to ensure it was up. THis is sort of the backbone to many possibilities on farm. We cover maybe 500 of 1200 acre so far with great wifi reception.
[07:34:01]<alexheiss[m]>ACTION uploaded an image: image.png (334KB) < https://matrix.org/_matrix/media/v1/download/matrix.org/mhVuvDwoOreahWaO... >
[07:34:39]<alexheiss[m]>ACTION uploaded an image: image.png (983KB) < https://matrix.org/_matrix/media/v1/download/matrix.org/HmjEGLVgiHpgUwhm... >
[07:34:40]<alexheiss[m]>Alerts if it stops reporting....
[07:34:57]<mstenta[m]>Any of the above
[07:35:03]<mstenta[m]>Depending on what's needed
[07:35:35]<mstenta[m]>I figured starting with a simple general module that data could be posted to would cover most cases
[07:36:00]<mstenta[m]>That's awesome @alexheiss:matrix.org !!
[07:36:04]<alexheiss[m]>Wouldn't the 'listener' already do that for the sensors, it gave some sort of dynamic url to post to
[07:36:05]<mstenta[m]>Love the UI!
[07:36:29]<alexheiss[m]>Heh, thank Amazon. How about all your time series data auto hoooked to that UI?
[07:36:36]<mstenta[m]>Yes... Sorry my messages might be a little delayed. Using my phone...
[07:36:47]<alexheiss[m]>By name space, or category or whatever
[07:37:11]<alexheiss[m]>Gotcha
[07:39:28]<alexheiss[m]>I'll hone in on that listener and see what's going on. Maybe I can propose a way to have generic module report the data to AWS for those intererested in that... Could try to make cloud-vendor agnostic, or at least start to model it that way...
[07:40:08]<mstenta[m]>That would be awesome!
[07:40:19]<alexheiss[m]>Unless we feel the reporting/alerting of FarmOS is good enuf?
[07:40:25]<alexheiss[m]>Or worth improving?
[07:40:54]<alexheiss[m]>The AWS integration would be super fun for me, possibly helpful to you and a great way to learn
[07:42:25]<alexheiss[m]>Anyways, I'll let you get to work Michael. Great stuff you got here, I wish I knew Drupal but doesn't look too bad. Got my local dev environment up... The docker-compose didn't work quite right but I think it's my env
[07:43:19]<alexheiss[m]>Troubles starting up the DB, either one - mysql or postgres.. different issues either way, but im like ubuntu on windows rn
[07:44:28]<mstenta[m]>Lots to talk about! Let me get back to you tonight or tomorrow after splitting day :-)
[07:44:32]<alexheiss[m]>So just downloaded this Acquia and that was super easy. Want that process added to docs?
[07:44:42]<mstenta[m]>I can fill you in on where things stand in farmOS
[07:44:49]<mstenta[m]>Definitely worth exploring integrations
[07:45:18]<alexheiss[m]>Sounds good Michael. Enjoy and stay safe!
[07:45:29]<mstenta[m]>Thanks! Looking forward to talking!
[07:49:04]<alexheiss[m]>Same here :) Make sure your hands stay around, they are pretty valuable
[08:34:57]<mstenta[m]>Haha agreed. Will do. :-)
[08:41:01]<dornawcox[m]>Welcome Alex! Re: Farm Beats - I have been in touch Ranveer Chandra who is heading the work - but not much in the lasy 6 months. I have been hoping to test a prototype of their system but he has not sent one out yet.
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