VFarm

Vertical farming automated, modularized, and made accessible for the busy city-dweller.

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Inspiration

We are students who are passionate about making healthy and tasty food with ingredients that we can trust, and we wanted to make farming at home more accessible for people with low budgets / limited space in their homes.

What it does

VFarm is an automated, modularized vertical farming solution at a price point that our competitors can't beat. The companion app tracks what plants are grown in each module and automatically adjusts the nutrient content and water flow rate through the farm to maintain the plants' health. The app also allows for community interaction to help people get started, and pushes warnings when user action is required.

How we built it

The app was built entirely in the Android Studio framework. We knew from the beginning that since gardening operates on such long time frames, we were going to have to store a sizable amount of information online. So, we decided to focus on a lightweight framework (Firebase Firestore/Storage) for a proof of concept. While many of our components in the app still aren't finished, we have developed a layout and are confident in our direction of development. We also cadded the model for the physical farm itself in order to better visualize the final product.

What's next for VFarm

We are still working on finalizing the hardware and sensor load-out that would be required to fully automate the system. We are also working on adding more sign-in authenticators and a website in order to better enable the VFarm forums.

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