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powerplant: GSOC 2018 Ideas List
Prospective students welcome!
Below you will find a list of the ideas that developers and mentors would like you to work on for GSOC 2018.
Index
Administration Interface
You can find this task #1162 on our PMS
Explanation
In general admins need to be able to easily modify the database. Also there should be a way for admins to easily add and edit crop and crop relationship data.
Aim of this project is to create such administration interface for the web UI with editors for all database document types.
Required skills
- JavaScript (preferred ES6)
- Node.js
preferred experience with
* Express * Mongoose * React * Redux * MongoDB * mocha * supertest
Expected results
Boolean "admin" field added to the User database document.
- Access control implemented so that everybody can see crop and crop relationship data, but only admins can add/remove/edit it.
- Administration interface should be only available to admins.
Editors for database document types: users, crops, crop relationships
- Generic UI component for editing a list of documents
- Easily navigable with search features
Code challenge
- Write code by using mongoose to call the powerplant API to get all crops beginning with “ap” from powerplant.ecohackerfarm.org/api (or local instance)
- create local cache in redux for API calls younger then 30 min
- create a view in React that shows the data asked for and gives feedback if the the data came from cache (redux) or directly from the API
Mentor
Design and Implement Weather API
You can find this task #1120 on our PMS
Explanation
Measure of heat accumulation is a common heuristic for predicting plant growth rates. Prediction of the harvest date (or planting date that corresponds to a given harvest date) of a particular crop is possible when temperature data from previous years, or even other locations, is augmented with dates of the crop's growth stages.
Weather forecasts can provide warnings of frost or rain.
Aim of this project is to collect weather data from external web services and implement algorithms for calculating heat accumulation, predicting crop growth stages, and providing weather warnings.
Web services that provide weather data:
Required skills
- JavaScript
- Node.js
- Express
- Mongoose
Expected results
- Database structure extended to store daily weather data for each garden location
- CLI administration commands for seeing and modifying daily weather data
- Server periodically fetching weather data from at least two external web services
- Internal function (+ unit tests) for calculating heat accumulations
- HTTP API call (and CLI command) for predicting growth stages of a crop
- HTTP API call (and CLI command) for weather warnings
- Extra: UI component for showing graphically the planting date of a crop, current growth stage, and estimation of the harvest date
- Extra: UI component for showing weather warnings
Code challenge
Implement database model, low-level HTTP API, and low-level CLI commands for weather data.
Mentor
Enhance the crop relationship model
You can find this task #1121 on our PMS
Explanation
Many plants form symbiotic relationships with other plants and organisms. The mechanisms by which two plants interact with each other are varied. They include:
- Plant attracts insects that are beneficial for another plant
- Plant provides climbing support for another plant
- Plants form mycorrhizal networks
Aim of this project is to go through scientific publications about plant relationships (companion plant, symbiosis), categorize the different interaction mechanisms, and improve our crop relationship model based on the gathered data.
References to scientific articles should also be stored in the database and linked to the corresponding crop relationship documents.
Required skills
- Knowledge and interest about plants and gardening
- JavaScript
- Node.js
- Express
- Mongoose
- React
- Redux
Expected results
- Database model for references of scientific articles.
- Crop relationship data collected from 50 scientific articles, and the crop relationship model enhanced based on this data.
- UI component for adding and editing crop relationship data and saving it to the server. This will be included to the Administration interface (#1162).
- UI component for designing a garden bed, making use of the enhanced crop relationship model, especially the information about interaction mechanisms. If possible this should be integrated with existing components.
Code challenge
Add database model for references of scientific articles, linked with the crop relationship model. Make it possible to add references from the CLI.
Mentor
Integrate parts of Plants for a Future (PFAF) database to powerplant
You can find this task #1305 on our PMS
Explanation
The Plants For A Future database is a permaculture-oriented database that contains information about over 7000 edible plants.
Aim of this project is to integrate parts of PFAF database by identifying data that has a functional purpose in powerplant, and then implementing algorithms and UI components that use this data.
Examples of PFAF data:
USDA hardiness zone is a classification of plants based on their capability of growing in a geographic location with specified average annual minimum temperature. Hardiness zone can be used to select plants that are capable of growing in a given geographic location.
Nitrogen fixation is the ability of a plant to fix atmospheric nitrogen to soil. By tracking the nitrogen fixers of a garden bed over years, it is possible to plan a crop rotation schedule where the accumulated nitrogen is used by nitrogen consumers during successive growing seasons.
Plant habit refers to a coarse type or shape of a plant. Habit can be used to (help) select plants that maximize the habitual diversity of a garden.
Required skills
- Knowledge and interest about plants and gardening
- JavaScript
- Node.js
- Express
- Mongoose
- React
Expected results
"USDA hardiness zone" integrated to powerplant
- Crop database schema extended with a field for hardiness zone
- Internal function (+ unit tests) for calculating the hardiness zone for a given location, utilizing geographic coordinates and temperature data
- HTTP API call (and CLI command) for searching crops that match the hardiness zone of the user's location
"Nitrogen fixation" integrated to powerplant
- Database extended so that powerplant is able to track nitrogen fixers of a garden bed over time
- CLI administration commands for showing and modifying low-level database documents
- Internal function (+ unit tests) for calculating the amount of nitrogen in a garden bed at a given time, when the history of the bed is known
- UI component and HTTP API calls (+ corresponding CLI commands) for planning a long-term schedule for a garden bed that utilizes crop rotation
"Plant habit" integrated to powerplant
- Crop database schema extended with a field for plant habits
- Internal function (+ unit tests) for searching crops that increase the habitual diversity of the garden
- HTTP API call (and CLI command) for searching crops that increase the habitual diversity of the garden, combined with the HTTP API call for searching crops based on hardiness zone
Code challenge
Identify another piece of data from PFAF database that is functional for powerplant, and plan, discuss and begin its implementation.
Mentors
UX Design/ Analyse UX / Improve UX
You can find this task #1321 on our PMS
Explanation
Required skills
Expected results
Code challenge
Mentor
Schedule
You can find this task #1322 on our PMS
Explanation
For planning the Crops in a bed we need a Schedule that shows the period of time of a plant in a bed and the preparation work. The Scheduler needs to show free space in a specific bed and time period to optimize the harvest per square meter. It should also take weather data into account and warn the user for example of frost. Additionally it should trigger task like expected harvest and expected care work of a bed/plants.
Required Skills
For Development of the frontend architecture the student needs to have a good knowledge of: JS ES6
and a basic knowledge of:
- mongodb
- nodejs
- mongoid
- React
- Redux
- React-Redux
Expected Results
After the student finished implementing the schedule, it has to have a working frontend with following interactions:
- Add new crops in empty time space in the bed
- Adding Logs e.g. “Plant Died”, “Replanted”
- React to weather data input with warnings or defined tasks
- Show planted crops as time period and expected growing stages
Also we expect to have an implemented architecture for the frontend dataflow that collects the data from
- the backend
- Weather API
and calculates actions e.g. “Needs to be replanted”, “Needs to be trimmed”, “Need water”. Also the results have to be synchronization with the database in the backend to a defined API.
Code challenge
Mentor
Project template
Do you have other ideas you would like to propose? Complete the template below and contact the Organization Administrators
Project title
Please make it simple and self explanatory.
Explanation
Describe the idea as specifically as possible.
Required skills
Describe skills required here
Expected results
Add here expected results
Code challenge
This will be assigned to the student once the project has been discussed and approved by the mentors. This is generally a short task for an interested student to demonstrate the capabilities with the used tools, e.g. deploying the web server and changing behaviour of feature Z.
Mentor/s
A mentor or mentors will be assigned to the student once the project has been discussed and approved by the mentors.