Challenger: Maui Makers
Location: Maui, Hawaii, USA
Project Name: The Chill Box: a chilled soil agricultural demonstration
Primary Documentation URL: http://www.mauimakers.com/wiki2/doku.php?id=the_chill_box_project
Short Description and Summary:
The Chill Box is a chilled soil agricultural demonstration created for The Great Global Hackerspace Challenge of March-May 2011 by Maui Makers, a maker space on the island of Maui, Hawaii USA. Chilled Soil Agriculture is a method of growing produce that circulates cold water through the soil, condensing water from atmosphere and also creating a temperature differential between roots and leaves, simulating the seasons. The technology can be effective at growing plants in dry tropical regions that otherwise would not be productive. Our demonstrator is a small tabletop (windowbox) implementation using a Peltier Cooler with Arduino based control system.
Caveat: Near the end of the challenge, we discovered Dew Point Systems holds a broad patent (United States Patent US7069689) on the basic Chilled Soil technology. We do need to disclose this information to our readers. We will also notify Dew Point of the project and ask for permission to use the tech for small demonstrations.
The bulk of documentation exists on our Wiki (see link above). During the project we documented the build on our blog and discussed in our google group (see link above for references).
Final result
Three days before the end of the challenge, on our final hardware build day, the unit failed to cool its pipes and condense water. We believe the peltier unit, a key component of The Chill Box, failed. The peltier is permanently affixed using thermal epoxy to two other critical components and it would be impossible to replace the three parts in the remaining time. While there are several mods that could be done to make a functional chilled soil demo, we chose instead to focus on project documentation in the remaining time. We can return to the project after the challenge and work alternatives at leisure. The project has been highly educational to us personally. The current setback is part of that learning experience. We remember the motto of Crashspace - Fail Fail Fail WIN!!
On the upside - Maui Makers has secured a permanent location - currently shared offices and the first container that will become our building was delivered this morning
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