Emerson:

“Scaling Up Agriculture” is a fully automated scale designed to easily weigh and log yield data. The project is the product of a collaboration between Nuvu and Land’s Sake Farm, a non-profit in Weston, MA. During a visit to the farm, employees detailed the current produce weighing system. The system the farm used before this project was inefficient and left a lot of room for human error. They first weighed their produce then scratched down those numbers only to later upload to a google sheet when an employee had time. This wasted a lot of valuable time that a farmer could use to be in a field harvesting more produce. The scale weighs agricultural products normally, however its unique design then uploads that data to the google cloud. “Scaling Up Agriculture” not only compiles the farm’s data, but synthesizes it too. “Scaling Up Agriculture” uses a web interface to organize the data, plot and graph data about soil health, weather trends, and uses public records to compare Land’s Sake Farm’s growth history to other farms in Massachusetts. 

“Scaling Up Agriculture” combats Land’s Sake Farm’s basic system and expedites the process with its unique design. “Scaling Up Agriculture” is made with code using a large circuit. The circuit is built on a 20x20” plywood sheet, with four load cells placed in custom 3D printed brackets. The load cells measure yield weight. There is also a rotary encoder button and LCD screen within the circuit. The screen is used to display a produce type, and acts like a selection menu. Once a product is picked, the button can be pressed to officially select the type of produce. All of these elements are connected to ESP32 microcontroller wifi connected arduino. Once the wifi connected arduino connects to a local wifi network, it then utilizes ‘If This Then That’ software to automatically connect the data to a google spreadsheet. The project was made to be versatile, durable, and supportive of a small business’ (Land’s Sake Farm) produce weighing process. 

Tommy:

“Scaling Up Agriculture” is a weighing scale that works to weigh and aggregate and upload yield data directly from the implement to the cloud. This project was born out of a partnership with Land’s Sake Farm in Weston, Massachusetts. The farm detailed their weighing process, which required many steps from data collection to data synthesization and had much room for error. This project works to streamline that process, saving important time for farmers. After compiling yield data, “Scaling Up Agriculture” plots the data on a graph next to environmental factors that impact yield, such as weather and soil health. Land’s Sake Farm’s data is also plotted next to publicly available data on local farms of comparable size. 

Land’s Sake Farm will benefit from this design because it makes their data collection process more efficient and faster, saving working hours and allowing the farmers to spend more time out in the fields. The data will then be synthesized into a simplified, usable form and plotted automatically against other relevant data to better inform decisions on the farm. The scale uses four load cells, which are all grounded to each other and then feed into a breakout board. The breakout board attaches to a battery-powered ESP-32 Microcontroller that is connected to the local Wi-Fi network. The user selects the type of produce with a rotary encoder and an LCD screen, and then the ESP-32 processes and uploads the data directly to a Google Sheets document. Once the data is uploaded it is plotted and then displayed on a mobile web interface, where it is compared to other publicly-available data such as the weather and inputted data such as annual soil testing readings. Scaling Up Agriculture automates data collection and usage on Land’s Sake Farm, allowing the farm to make more informed decisions.