Wookie Compost

I now fully understand why Jabba the Hut chose to feed his enemies to the Sarlacc Pit. He surely used the Sarlacc compost in his vegetable gardens.

For those who are unaware, the Sarlacc is a plant like omnivore that embeds itself in the ground with only its mouth protruding. It preys on victims that are caught with its tentacles and digests them for thousands of years.

While normal composted material is great for a garden, a digested Chewbacca or Boba Fett must have provided excellent garden nutrients.

I now have much smaller versions of the Sarlacc living at my house and while they do not digest things for thousands of years, the things they do digest and provide as waste are solid gold for the garden.

Here is their home:

These little Sarlaccs are known as Eisenia fetida and they produce vermi compost. I received these little worms from an expert gardener that I know well.










Essentially I have a small Sarlacc pit in my garage and I feed it vegetables and newspaper. The worms digest it for many months and then produce compost that I can feed to the plants. I am very new to the world of worm compost but it doesn't sound too difficult.

Here is a close up picture of a worm:

He's a nice looking worm. And the dark matter is the compost ready to be harvested. I checked the worms today and they needed to be fed.

This is a bit of old salad and my worm stick.

I choose to use a stick to move the paper around instead of my hand because, well, essentially this is a large bucket of poo.

Here is the bin with the salad mixed in. I moved the paper to one side, put the salad underneath and then did the same to the other side.

In my last post I showed the burrito of seeds I was testing to see if they were still viable. Here are the seeds after a week. They ended up being pretty smelly.

I opened them up and here is the result:

A few of the bean seeds sprouted in the paper towel and a few didn't. The spinach seeds didn't sprout at all. At least I know which I should plant.

I have planted the seeds that germinated so hopefully they will continue to grow.

Please stay tuned for part 2 in the exciting worm composting series: harvesting the compost.

Gardening on Tatooine

I'm sure it must have been difficult farming on the planet of Tatooine. Those two suns beating down on the crops all day drying everything out. Farming for moisture would have been especially difficult for Uncle Owen in that hot sun even with the several moisture vaporators maintained on the farm.

But i'm sure one thing that farming on Tatooine and farming on Earth have in common is the importance of soil. I am convinced that good soil is essential to a successful garden and healthy plants.

When I first started as the Jedi Gardener I very excitedly tilled up my grass and planted my seeds in the normal gray yard dirt.

Here is a picture:

That yard dirt struggled to support my budding garden and the plants did not do well.

That cucumber plant is not happy.

This year I decided to get some more nutritious dirt for the vegetables. After a bit of research I bought 4 cubic yards of 50/50 Mushroom compost and topsoil.

There is some very serious controversy over the supposed benefits of mushroom compost. Some say it is too salty, others say it has no nutritional value because it is high heated after use to kill weeds. I will report throughout the growing season on my experience. So far it is noticeably better than the yard dirt I had been using. 

I have direct seeded a few things. Here are some beets, radishes and onions:

One thing is for certain, if I could eat maple trees I would be all set. All of the maple tree helicopters have seeded little maple trees and are causing trouble. Here are some now:

But thats ok. They are easy to weed.

Below is a carrot that is growing. The seeds for carrots are very small and seem to take a long time to germinate.

Here is a bean. For some reason only one bean sprouted out of 10 seeds that I planted. For this reason I have decided I need to test to see if my seeds are germinatable. 

I have placed a line of seeds, beens of different types and some spinach, in a line on a damp paper towel. I have then placed the paper towel in a plastic ziplock bag to keep the moisture in.

These look like burritos but they are not. After a week or so I will open these up and see if they have germinated. I can then plant them if they are viable.

Stay tuned for a very exciting post on Verma Worm Compost.

The R2 Copter Awakens

This is the fourth and final post in the quadcopter series on the Jedi Gardener blog. I'm sure by now you have ordered your parts and have begun to put together a quadcopter of your own.

Like any good Padawan I have learned many things in my first month of flying.

My first day out I was very excited. I had tuned everything, made sure the motors were spinning the correct direction and entered some initial parameters into the flight controller. I started taking off, attempting to hover close to the ground and each time I would take off one of the propellers would spin off. I hand tightened it back on and kept flying. Off it would pop again. This happened a few times.

I decided to take it up a little higher. At around 15 feet off the ground the propeller popped off and the copter flipped over and crashed to the ground.

Unfortunately the crash broke the motor mount off of the frame and I lost one of the collets that attach the propeller. I was very sad. The gunk on the arm is where I tried to jb weld the parts together. It didn't work.

This leads to lesson number one. Always have extra parts on hand. Luckily I had ordered a spare frame just in case I broke a part and it came in handy. I haven't broken anything else besides propellers but I think its good to have a spare motor and esc on hand especially when shipping things from overseas.

So lesson number two is make sure your propellers are very tight. Now I use a screw driver through the collet to make sure they are super tight and I haven't had a propeller pop off again.

It is also very important to balance your propellers to ensure that there is little vibration during flight. I built a wooden prop balancer with magnets and a sewing needle. If one blade is heaver I just do a little sanding on the inside of the blade until it balances. It seems to work pretty well.

After the copter flipped over I realized that I needed to protect the flight controller on the top and this led to the R2Copter dome. It also gives it a bit of a friendly personality. I made the dome with an upside down bowl and some paint

I plan to post a video of the copter flying around but need to go out to an open field sometime.

I have also started to take some aerial pictures of the new garden. Here are some examples. As you can see this will be a lot of fun and I'm sure very useful for evaluating irrigation patterns.

Here are some normal garden pictures:

This is the start of the new gardening season and it is going to be a sunny one.

A few of my hardcore followers recently pointed out that my most recent posts are a departure from the typical jedi gardener post filled with useful gardening anecdotes and hilarious star wars banter.

While these posts were very detailed and admittedly woefully boring they are completely necessary if your goal is to build a farmcopter. I would expect that most of you are currently working on your parts list as we speak.

This post will hopefully complete the circle and explain the inherent usefulness a quadcopter can have on an urban farm.

This weekend I was working on a project involving a large number of 2x8's and 4x4 posts. My wife Carla and I recently purchased a swing set for my sons Han and Luke. Of course you can't just install the swing set on the grass. A thick bed of very safe bark is necessary to cushion any falls that might take place. So this weekend I built the border to reign in the enormous amount of mulch that will soon be shoveled into my backyard.

Here is the wood.  Luckily Lowes had some pretty strong string to tie everything in.

After I got home I thought "how am I going to get this into the backyard. But then I remembered the quadcopter. 

Here is a picture just after flying this large 4x4 into the backyard.

Here is the farmcopter carrying a large 2x8.

It would have taken a while to carry these back by hand so having the copter around was pretty handy. Unfortunately I didn't have the video camera out to capture the actual flight but I'm sure you get the picture.

Here is the project in progress.

And here is a picture of the finished frame. Pythagorean's theorem was useful for squaring it up. Soon it will be filled with lots and lots of cushiony mulch.  The payload capacity of your quadcopter may vary.

Farmcopter Build: Part 2

Now on to Part 2: the parts list and build.

In post number 1 I listed my goals for the quadcopter and what I wanted to get out of the build. This is very important as this will determine what parts you buy and there are infinite options from which to choose.

In this post I will detail all of the parts of the quadcopter and how to assemble them.


Here are the parts I decided on:

Frame:

I decided on the Hobbyking S500 Glass Frame. It is a good size and has a good number of mounting options for accessories. The arms have a carbon rod in the center making them very strong. At this price I would recommend ordering two frames for spare parts. On my first day flying I broke one of the arms (this was my fault and not the fault of the frame).

Motors:

The selection of motors requires some calculations to select the amount of thrust needed to fly. Total thrust required equals the total weight times two. You divide this by four to calculate the thrust per motor.

                                                 Total weight of the quad x 2

                                                 ----------------------------------     = Thrust Per motor

                                                                       4

I bought the Turnigy D2830-11 1000kV motor. These have worked very well and provide plenty of lift. 

Speed Controllers:

Initially I was planning to purchase the Turnigy 30 Amp ESC's but they were out of stock when I placed my order. I ended up purchasing the Afro 30 Amp ESC's. I am glad that I did because these come flashed with the SimonK firmware. This firmware has a much higher refresh rate, around 400 Mhz, than other speed controllers.  This also have bullet connectors already soldered on which is handy.

Flight Controller:

There are tons of good options when it comes to a flight controller. The kk2.1.5 is a good beginner board. It has an LCD screen on board and can be programmed on the fly without a laptop. It is also inexpensive.  There are also a number of open source boards including the cc3d and the APM powered boards. The APM powered board is more expensive but is autonomous with GPS and a barometer. I am starting with the kk board and will plan to upgrade down the road.

Radio:

I bought the OrangeRX 6 channel radio. It is compatible with spektrum dsm2 receiver modules and is working well. The Turnigy 9x radio is also a good option and has transmitter modules that can be exchanged for compatibility with different receivers. You will also need a receiver. I ordered this one.

Props: 

The props are very important for the proper configuration of the quad. I chose simple plastic props but will probably buy carbon props in the future. I would recommend buying a few sets especially when starting out as they are the first to break in a rough landing.

Here is what I bought:
Right hand rotation
Left hand rotation

They are fairly inexpensive but break easily. You will need a simple prop balancer to ensure that they are weighted correctly. I have had to balance them by sanding the underside of the heavier blade.

Here is a useful graphic used to tell which prop is right or left:

Miscellaneous Items:

Power breakout cable: For power distribution you have the option of soldering your own or purchasing a premade set. I purchased this and it made assembly very easy. Make sure the connectors match your battery and ESC's.

Battery straps: These hold the battery to the frame. Order a few of these.

Battery alarm: With LiPo batteries it is important to not let the individual cell voltage drop below 3.3v.  If the voltage drops below this point the battery could be permanently damaged and no longer hold a charge. This alarm connects directly to the balancing plug on the battery. When the battery is depleted it flashes red for the specific cell that is depleted and emits a loud alarm.

Battery:

The battery I chose was the Zippy 4000 mah batter. It is a 3 cell 25c battery. I have been getting around 15 minutes of flight time with this battery. One recommendation: if you are in the US order from a US warehouse. Ordering from overseas can take a long time as LiPO's cannot be shipped by plane. They can also get caught up in customs and take a long time to arrive.

Servo leads: Here. These are used to connect the receiver to the flight controller.

Battery charger: I already had a nice LiPO charger but if you don't you will need a charger and battery balancer.


Building the Quad:

After a few weeks I received all of my items. No problems ordering from China and everything came as expected.

The first step is to install the motors on the arms. I used blue loctite on all of the bolts to ensure that they didn't loosen during flight. I had to use longer screws because of the thickness of the arms.

Here are all of the arms fully assembled.

After installing the motors I built the frame. I put loctite everywhere just to be sure. 

I should have taken more pictures of the wiring but really the process wasn't too exciting. Everything went together easily with the wiring harness. I zip tied the ESC's to the bottom of the arms to protect them from damage. 

Routing the wires to the flight controller was a bit of a challenge but everything eventually fit. In this picture the flight controller is mounted in the box it came in just to check the fit. This frame has a really nice mount on the bottom and keeps the battery low in the center of gravity.

I puzzled for a while on how to mount the flight controller. There is lots of discussion on how to vibration damp the board. I bought a pack of ear plugs from the hardware store and cut the tips off. I then hot glued them to the bottom of a small piece of wood and zip tied this to the quad frame. The zip ties keep it pretty tight but it does have some flex because of all of the little ear plugs. So far I have had pretty good results with this setup. 

This frame does not have the mounting holes to mount this flight controller directly. I am not sure if the board has odd mounting holes or the frame doesn't support the FC configuration. I may look for other options to mount the flight controller depending on the flight characteristics. 

So, after all of this I figured out that I had forgotten to order the receiver for my radio. I had to place another order that took three weeks to arrive. But it all worked out and I am happy with the way it flies.

Stay tuned for post number 3. I will take some video of the flight and provide some tuning information for the kk board.

Building things is fun: Quadcopter build Part 1

Building things is fun. And building things that do something is even more fun. Building something that is super dangerous is potentially triple the fun.

The next few series of posts will chronicle my build of a quadcopter. I am completely new to the world of flying remote control things and this has definitely been a learning experience. My hope would be to get all of the pertinent information needed to build a quadcopter in one place as far as the research and planning necessary for the build.

Some say that a multicopter is like a flying lawnmower and I would say that is pretty accurate. Flying inside is not a good idea. Just ask my coffee table and the many propellers that I have hacked up.

The normal Jedi Gardener post is of course filled with very pertinent information about vegetables, star wars and physics. This post is a slight departure from that but strangely still applicable to gardening. Many large scale farmers are using multi-copters to examine irrigation patterns, soil variations and pest infestations. This is also a much needed tool for many suburban farmers like myself. After I learn to fly that is.

The first step in getting into multicopters is the decision on whether to build your own or buy a pre-built copter. I was initially planning to buy a ready to fly quad but decided to build based on several factors:

1. I really like the DJI Phantom series of quads but they have demonstrated that they can release a firmware revision that will make your purchase non-functional. With the recent landing of a Phantom on the white house lawn DJI relased a firmware update that prevents their Phantom series of quadcopters from flying in certain areas: DC localities, near airports etc. I don't want to be at the mercy of a corporate decision on where I can fly.
2. With a pre-built copter I was also concerned about what happens when it breaks. In my first two weeks I have already broken it once and I am sure that I will break it again. Without building the copter I would have less of an understanding of how to fix and tune it when needed.
3. The array of options you have with a build is unlimited and therefore you can build a machine that can suit your needs. 

After you have decided to build your own copter, the next step, and arguably the most fun, is research. There are so many parts to choose from and options, as far as wiring and flight controllers, that a lot of searching around is necessary. Luckily lots of people have built quads and written about their builds.

Here are some resources I used:

Quadcopter Garage

Tested article on Quads

Robot Kingdom

My goal is to have a quadcopter that I can easily repair. I would also like to expand later with a gimbal/camera and more advanced flight controllers.

So thats the end of Part 1. Stay tuned for Part 2 where I will detail the parts list.

Return of the Jedi (Gardener)

The Empire had a lot of good qualities with one of them being persistence. They built a pretty amazing space station:  the Death Star was big, could shoot down planets and had a trash compactor with a monster inside.

But, it had one fatal flaw. It had a single exhaust port that could destroy the whole thing. I am sure the engineer that designed that portion did not get extraordinary contributor on his review that year.

In spite of that initial setback the empire persevered and built another one.  That second one was also destroyed but at least they learned from their initial design flaw.

Last year my garden experienced a few set backs as well.

There was a strange bug that attacked many of the plants that has been the scourge of my garden. I vow to find out what type of bug this was and fight it organically somehow. I also expanded too quickly and was overwhelmed with the number of weeds and bugs.

I will let the pictures speak for themselves...

These are my formerly wonderful cucumbers:

Here is an odd looking watermelon:

Kramer used to love hiding in the cucumber trellis. But alas:

'

The great thing about gardening is each year is started with a clean slate. The soil is fresh and weed free and last years issues seem like anomalies. 

So, this year I have moved my garden to a different location in the yard and will be focusing on two raised beds. I am going to make the most of these small spaces and try to grow something in every inch of space. I am also going to make sure the soil is really good quality.

Here is a picture of my new location:

So, if anyone has any tips to keep out the vicious cucumber bug or improve soil quality I would like to see your comments.