Fab Academy 18

Project Development

1 - INTRO:

This has been the most time I have ever invested in a project In my life ever, and it has worth it!

Before I decided to start FabAcademy, I did a Master In Design for Emergent Futures where my thesis is related to “How to use technology to make smallholder farmers more resilient to clima change?” (Sept19/ Jul20), from where one of the first ideas I has was this box where you could replicate the climate of somewhere else inside to experiment with plants.

From that moment, I did my first prototype of POWAR… and I named it! “The Plant Observatory of Weather Adaptability for resilience”. The first prototype was only made out of eight sticks forming something similar to a box, covered in cellophane paper with a plant inside and a disconnected Arduino above it… it was just an speculative idea at the moment…(it’s a shame I never took a picture of it).

After I finished my master, where I saw the FabAcademy content but didn’t had to document it that deep, I decided to finish the FabAcademy certificate so I started, after lockdown and by myself mostly, to do all the missing assignments and to prototype what would be the first version of POWAR. Which, in my mind, was going to have integrated CV that could learn and tell which plant grows best with which conditions, connected to a global database with information gathered from smallholder farmers around the world… and well… I still have that idea in mind for a near future…
Once again, it all started with a box and a concept… but this time I integrated some RGB lights a water pump and some 3D printed parts… not even a screen, and not even a finished electronics board… but people was getting excited each time I told them the story of POWAR, “The Climate Simulator.

Voltio