Project

Personal Food Computer

Jimmy Day, MIT Media Lab

The OpenAg™ Personal Food Computer is a tabletop-sized, controlled environment agriculture technology platform that uses robotic systems to control and monitor climate, energy, and plant growth inside of a specialized growing chamber. Climate variables such as carbon dioxide, air temperature, humidity, dissolved oxygen, potential hydrogen, electrical conductivity, and root-zone temperature are among the many conditions that can be controlled and monitored within the growing chamber to yield various phenotypic expressions in the plants. 

Our latest version—the PFC v3.0, or "PFC_EDU"—has been scaled down from previous PFC's in terms of cost, size, and complexity, and designed specifically with educators and children aged 8-14 in mind. It offers a spectrum of control so that users can make their growing experience as manual or as automated as they would like.

Click here to Build a Food Computer.

Like all OpenAg's Food Computers, the PFC_EDU is open source and can be made from easily accessible components so that #nerdfarmers with a broad spectrum of skills, resources, and interests can build, modify, share, and upgrade over time. Build instructions, design files, and helpful resources for all our OpenAg™ Personal Food Computers are on our OpenAg Wiki, OpenAg Github so nerd farmers can band together (using the OpenAg Forum) to conduct scientifically rigorous citizen-science experimentation, all over the world.