Ask HN: What is your “I don't care if this succeeds” project?
Vertical indoor farm to reach the highest throughout possible per cubic meter are, using only non-GMO plants by discovering the right phenomics- <a href="https://hexafarms.com" rel="nofollow">https://hexafarms.com</a><p>Vertical indoor farms are getting a lot of attention in the recent times, but the issue is the lack of plant expertise. Even if you were to go through all the literature, you would never find a holistic study that takes into account all the optimal factors for specific plant growth. For example, for lettuce, the best you will get would be EC, Ph, Light Intensity, CO2 ppm over an average range. However, approaching it from a perspective of 'systems' design where all these things play a role (often in an interaction with all factors) is still missing. For example, what part of the artificial light spectrum + nutrition level + air composition would be most optimal is still missing.<p>I'm a computer scientist by training and I'm trying to solve this with ML. It's a really hard problem, but I'm doing it. I have a mini-farm setup in my appt where I collect the data, but hopefully I'm getting some more seed-money to build a 10m^2 farm to be able to demonstrate the optimization. My goal is to hit as high as 370 kilos of herbs per m^2 (or 2.5 cubic meter) per year from only a four layer farm.