Prototypefund Application - 6th Round

In 2008 Franz worked on a terminology oriented database ODABA and afterwards while building software using that technology he was in close contact with the developers to improve their code. Link: http://odaba.com

In 2015, Franz co-founded Eco Hacker Farm which is an umbrella organisation to create Software and support local projects to build a combination of Hackerspaces with ecological farming. We promote and use OS software and develop solutions for everyone to use with open source, open data and privacy in mind.

Starting in 2016, Franz have been working on powerplant, doing mostly managerial tasks and regularly attending meetings, making technology choices and coordinated short coding sprints. Unfortunately I was unable to contribute more without an regular income. Link: https://github.com/Ecohackerfarm/powerplant/

From 2017 Martin created filehost which is open source (agpl): file0.s3kr.it . He also contributed to https://gtfobins.github.io and other opensource projects as can be seen on his github account.

Martin joined the powerplant team in 2018 regularly attending meetings and participating in decisions about the architecture of powerplant.

During 2018 Franz & Martin worked with numundo - a platform for ecovillages, intentional communities, permaculture farms, social projects and retreat centers, which is promised to go OS after funding, this hasn’t happened yet. Link: https://numundo.org

Short description of the project

powerplant is an open source software that allows anyone planning a garden to utilize companion planting and other permaculture practices. It provides intelligent suggestions to help the gardener by advising the best planting schedules and combinations of crops to maximize the garden's yield.

powerplant helps the gardener get the best crop results whilst also regenerating and revitalizing the ground and enhancing the diversity of living organisms.

As a result the whilst the gardener / farmer is able to enjoy increase in yields they are also helping to increase capability of storing CO2 in the ground, it drops the need for artificial fertilizer, reduces problems coming from monoculture such as large pest infestations, required use of pesticides and toxic waterways, increased risk for wildfires, landslides or similar incidents.

The drainage of water is reduced as well, which makes the area more resistant to droughts and reduces the water consumption of the agricultural area. powerplant ebales a faster result of your permaculture agriculture by avoiding mistakes and providing hints about what to do when and enhances scientific research on the topic by community created content.

Powerplant will be compound by:

a NodeJs Server with an open documented API for
- companion planting algorithm
- hosting and sharing projects (optional for the user – adds more features)
- communication between MongoDB and client
- aggregating and evaluating environmental data and trigger events
MongoDB server storing crop data and relations
a client based interface written in JS using React and Redux for offline usage which includes
administration and moderation interface
user interface for
- planning gardens and beds
- logging mechanism for beds and gardens to evaluate the result
- calendar for weather based or user created tasks
- enhancing crop data with related sources
- creating machine readable guides
- dashboard to see the development and progress bar of crops
- functionality to share and interact with projects with multiple users
a hosted Mediawiki filled with the content of practicalplants.org (inactive project) and enhanced by the synchronization with server and user input in the powerplant frontend
server running API and visualization for average min and maximum temperature of the year in a specific location (open source API for world wide hardiness zones) for calculating specific conditions

Garden Planner - not open source, not directed to improve soil/diversity, not cross platform Crop Planning Open-source but Java. Not easily usable. No harvest predictions, does not take environmental conditions into account or include any companion crop information. Not a great base upon which to expand. Garden Planner Open-source, simple planting calendar - powerplant has much more features

As people are becoming more conscious about what they eat and where this comes from. Our target group are people who are interested and want to live and eat better. Whilst the level of gardening experience may vary both the beginners and the experienced gardens can take advantage of powerplant’s tools and database in order to produce great crops to put on their tables. It also appeals to the experienced gardeners to share their knowledge and contribute to the database.

powerplant will be available as a web based app and marketed through permaculture forums, gardening forums, conferences and through collaborations with other projects that cover complimentary topics such as FarmOS and OpenFarm

At the moment powerplant takes a list of plants from the user and combines according to compatibility into beds. The underlying data is incomplete, the algorithm needs improvements in performance. The practicalplant.org data is about to be imported into the database and the mediawiki is in the progress of being set up. The API and visualization of hardiness zone is ca. 70% completed.

There is a good test and documentation coverage for existing implementation as well as a CLI which works against the API. The planning and research phase was well documented so that we are confident with our design and technology choices. While the hardiness zone feature will be completed, the mediawiki will be setup, synchronization will be implemented and the companion algorithm improved. After that we will implement the administration interface and enhance the user interface for editing data and logging data on crops, beds and locations, as well as implementing events reacting to weather data, user actions and logs. Further on we want to implement the calendar feature and the sharing with other users.

1300 hours in total for Franz & Martin