tl;dr: Here is the last day in 15 seconds:

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Our project for the course „Sketching with Hardware“ this semester, was the “Seedling Sitter”, an automated seed starting station for tomatoes and other vegetables. Hand in hand to our project documentation, I want to give a small introduction on how to start tomatoes from seed, what factors have influence on the plants growth and how we’ve tried to optimize these in our project.

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As this terms topic was “Robotanics – machines that improve garden work or make staying outside more enjoyable”,  my team partner Fabian and I decided to build something that Fabian still could use after the course for his home gardening – the Seedling Sitter. The Seedling Sitter is an automated glasshouse that controls the light and water supplies for plants.

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“Gardening – the typical hobby of a computer science student. /s”

was probably the first impression most of us had. How could we possibly build something cool with the topic “garden” in mind? Especially we – two young-ish men – who think about nothing but action/sports and haven’t seen a garden in ages..

At first, everything which came into our minds were things like intelligent scarecrows, water dispensers or seed slingers – simple iterations of different auxiliary tools for the default gardener. Effective and usable ideas, but nothing mindblowing. This continued until the combined brainstorming session.

Oh but still, all the power to you active gardeners – you stop the cities from becoming a grey pessimistic mess of concrete!

 The Choice

At the time for the brainstorming session we had 2 possible ideas which stuck. A remote control of a water dispenser mechanism and an implementation of a game called “Wikinger Chess”. None which we were thrilled with, the water dispenser was “too boring” and the “Wikinger Chess” was kind of really far fetched. Luckily during the combined brainstorming session we got an awesome idea, which pleased both of us. The combination of a hanging plotter and the art of living walls with moss.

A unique-ish implementation and application of vertical gardens.

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It is already Wednesday morning, it is freezing cold outside and this years “Sketching with Hardware” building phase is already at its halftime. Everyone is working on their projects and the stress level is overall pretty low, although some teams had a very short night because of minor incidents.

Unfortunately some of the participants are arriving a bit late because of exams, but our coaches are on time as always and giving advise on how to solve problems with a lot of creativity and expertise. And as soon as Bernhard is supplying us with sweets, the stress of the previous days seems to vanish instantly.
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Hello everyone,

this is Anja and Peter, Media – Informatics Bachelorette and Master, we finally made it and got our spot at the SWH-Practical Course, this year featuring the awesome topic: “ROBOTANICS: Machines that improve garden work or make staying outside more enjoyable” Wait… What?
Gardening and going outside? We are city kids playing video games all day. We don’t even know what the heck you can do on a  Wiesn except drinking beer. But alright, we are here for tinkering some nice gadgets right? Lets figure it out!

So since we established our lack of gardening knowledge, the project had to somehow revolve around our urbanism. So how does the city and gardening mix? Well there are those small green strips before my appartment where some of the residents planted a bunch of flowers. How is that called again? Ooh right, Guerilla Gardening! We got a starting point.

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The bird house your birds have been dreaming of!

Have you ever wondered if there is a way better way of keeping your birds comfortable and save than the standard boring bird house that can be bought everywhere? Of course you did! And we have a solution to your problem!

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Yesterday everyone has finally chosen their topic of this years “Sketching with Hardware”. Every team has an idea what they want to do next on their project. Some of them already have built a a rough construction, others are still considering to find out how they can build their projects as good as possible.

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The Idea

Our topic „robotanics“ also included machines, that make staying outside more ejoyable. Since my partner Philip and myself are not considering ourselves to have a green thumb, we were trying to improve activities with technology, that we love doing in the garden, when it came to brainstorming. 

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The Day Before

This Thursday, the 22nd of February, began as cold as all the other days of the week. Nevertheless, all teams showed up on time and ready to finally complete their precious projects. As the days before our very helpful and friendly coach-team split up to optimize their momentum: Beat took the morning shift and Bernhard showed up two hours later to offer his expertise and craftsmanship later in the day. Although this was the last complete day before our final presentations tomorrow most teams were surprisingly relaxed. But as we discovered later for some teams this was a very deceptive silence.
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