Rob Flanders pulls out his smartphone and with a few taps, he turns off a hydroponic water system. “This,” he says, referring to the farmhand app on his phone, “is the brains of the farm.”
Located in a shipping container in his backyard, the entire “smart farm” is less than .15% of an acre. Rob and his wife, Joan Flanders, manage everything—the lights, water pumps, water pH, humidity levels, fans and temperature—from that smartphone app. It’s all monitored and controlled using in-farm sensors connected to the cloud via a Verizon hotspot. When they aren’t actively working onsite, Rob and Joan remotely automate their tasks and monitor their farm’s growing metrics from their smartphones.
The Farmhand app monitors all sensor data—such as nutrient levels and pH, climate conditions and CO2—and pushes a notification if levels go off target. The repurposed shipping containers even come with Bluetooth to pipe in music. Rob plays ’70s rock ’n’ roll and the plants “love it.”
With just backyard gardening experience and some experiments with a small basement hydroponic (soilless) growing system, the couple jumped full-time into a smart farm career path. A commitment to healthy eating had opened their eyes to how hard it was to find fresh, locally grown, pesticide-free produce. At a vegan food festival, they saw a model version of an indoor, hydroponic freight container system and they were hooked.
Read the complete article at www.verizon.com.