So tonights post about the PancakeBot show you just how much fun you can have with microcontrollers (and other bits of technology) once you learn how to use them.

A recent SlashGear post is about an Arduino-controlled pancake-printing 3D printer that prints out an
Eiffel Tower. The PancakeBot is an open source project, so if you want to 3D print your pancakes, theres information out there to help you put together a slightly-wacky machine that will do just that.

The video for printing the Eiffel Tower is worth watching, if only to see how well-produced the video is and what a great job theyve done of getting the pancake printer to work.

But what I thought was even better was PancakeBots "Breakfast Gallop" video. I went to the projects website and checked out their blog. The video of a pancake horse riding across the countryside would be a priceless memory to make with your kids. After 3D printing the props for the video and after making the video, the kids get to eat the props! How much better can it get?

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Have wanted to make up some straw/hay bale garden beds for a while now & am happy I finely have..




The second bed is in the process of being planted & have also started a small no dig straw/hay bed for some potatoes to go into.. I love the idea of being able to grow in the straw as it slowly turns into compost & humus that can be added to other beds once it finishes breaking down...

For more regular updates & pictures from the patch come visit us on our Bits Out the Back Facebook page..
Have a great one All...

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Hey folks, this is our first give away!  We have three copies of Backyard Roots waiting to be mailed out.  If you have not yet seen it, this beautiful compilation by Lori Eanes is a photographic essay of thirty-five urban farms along the west coast ranging from the SF Bay area to Vancouver.  The pictures are stunning and the stories delightful.  All you have to do is leave a comment and we will randomly pick three winners.  Whether you want this book to give as a holiday gift or for your own coffee table, you will love it!  Check out Loris blog for info and interviews with more local urban farmers.  The give away will close Friday December 6th at 5pm.  Below are some pics from the book (surprise we are in there!)

 

*photos by Lori Eanes

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It really cant get more simple that this barrel farm.. I call it a dump & walk barrel as that is how I feed it.. A catcher or 2 or lawn clippings get dumped into the barrels & I walk away, its as easy as that.. The prunings & old plants from the veggie bed in the patch go in whole if they are small enough or get the once over with the lawnmower to chop them up a bit if they are to large..

A great type of farm to have under a fruit tree as any nutrients that leach out will feed the tree.. One like this will be added to a new bed we are making out the front soon..

For more regular updates & pictures from the patch come visit us on our Bits Out the Back Facebook page..
Have a great one All...
R?b..

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One Arduino applications that several people in the Humboldt Microcontrollers Group are interested in is a gardening project.

One possibility for getting started with an Arduino gardening project is the Potted Plant Protector that was in a recent Make post. This project uses three sensors to monitor the growing conditions of a plant, giving you detailed moisture, light and warmth information. A thorough gardening Arduino system will measure more than just those three types of data, but this is a good starting point. The Make post tells you what parts are needed for this Arduino project, and theres a video that guides you through the project. There are lots of other Arduino gardening projects to be found online, but this one is straightforward, relatively low cost and a quick way to get involved with microcontrollers and the world of plants.

Although this project wont be much of a challenge for the non-beginners in the Humboldt Microcontrollers Group, it might still be an excellent gardening project to start with. To make it more challenging, the advanced people could use the recommended hardware, then write their own code to monitor the growing conditions and display the data. After they have that working, they could download the sketches (Arduino programs) that Make has on their website for the project to compare how Make wrote the project programs and how the Humboldt coders structured the software.

Doing this project would also be a good start toward the aspects of Arduino gardening projects that dont necessarily involve electronic components and the initial programming to capture data. Those aspects include items like determining what moisture percentage is a good target for a given plant and figuring out how to measure the actual moisture, light and temperature levels for calibrating the sensor readings. Once the group has experience with those three sensors, we can figure out which additional sensors, such as soil pH, will give information needed for productive and interesting gardening.

At the May 29 meeting of the Humboldt Microcontroller Group, Im going to suggest that people in the group who want to do an Arduino gardening project set a date for choosing what they want to do for the first phase of the project (Ill suggest they go with this Potted Plant Protector). By mid or late June, we should be able to have a microcontroller-monitored garden operating and generating information.

Then well have to figure out how to use that information to help the plants grow better!!

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Made up a chicken waterer for the girls cage over the past few days.. This one is 25L/6½gal in size & should last the 4 of them for at least a week if not longer I think..



A closed in water feeder like this will also help to keep their water cleaner.. It was a constant battle with them scratching dirt into their old feeder so it needed cleaning at least every second day..  I think the closed in feeder will definitely take some of the "AWWW DAAAD" out of the daily chicken choirs..
I have already started to work on another design that I will have a crack at at a later date..

There are also the "Chicken feeder, Living greens feeder for poultry or rabbits"
& the "Cheap chicken feeder, how to build a bulk chicken/poultry feeder" clips that might interest you if your into doing some basic DIY jobs around the chook pen..

For more regular updates & pictures from the patch come visit us on our "Bits Out the Back" Facebook page...
Have a great one All...

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You can only imagine whats been going on late nights around here. After the kidos are in bed its time to make cheddar-cheddar and more cheddar.  We have finally been breaking open some of the first hard cheese we made after Ginger calved back in May when we were inundated with milk.  The cheese is sharp and creamy, each one tasting totally different. One or two tasting not-so-edible but several that have been devoured with soup and crackers or warm bread. Making hard cheese definitely has a learning curve and since I have a shorter attention span, hubby seems to be the cheese scientist in our kitchen.  It is super fun to have different interests within the same overall genre of homesteading/farming.  We can enjoy and benefit from each others hobbies without having to do everything ourselves. There has been talk of creating a cheese cave for properly aging all this hard cheese.  But for now it is stored at the bottom of the fridge.  I have visions of shelves of yellow cheese rounds dancing in my head.  Who knows what 2014 will hold....

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