Vertical farming

According to the United Nations Population Division (2009), the world population will increase from about 6.9 billion in 2010 to 9.2 billion in 2050 or an addition of about 2.3 billion more people to feed. The percentage of urban population will likewise increase from 50.46% in 2010 to 68.70% in 2050. It is expected that world population will continue to increase. Currently, the rate of growth per year is about 80 million.

Human population is growing, but lands area on the earth remains the same. The food security is alarming the world. There will be one day that there are not enough lands to farm. So vertical farming come into the role to counter this problem.

Vertical farming is the practice of producing food in vertically stacked layers, and where controlled environment can be introduce to produce better yields. 

Or in another words saying, we build apartment to accommodate more people. Vertical farming is like an apartment to plant crops, increasing the production with minimal land use.

How vertical farming helps:

1. Increased and Year-round Crop Production. This farming technology can ensure crop production all year-round in non-tropical regions. 1 indoor acre is equivalent to 4-6 outdoor acres or more, depending on the crop. For strawberries, 1 indoor acre may produce yield equivalent to 30 acres.
Furthermore, indoor farming will minimize infestation and post harvest spoilage.

2. Protection from Weather-related Problems. Because the crops will be grown under controlled environment, they will be safe from extreme weather occurences such as droughts and floods.

3. Organic Crops Production. The advantages of this urban farming technology can be further exploited by large scale production of organic crops. The controlled growing conditions will allow a reduction or total abandonment of the use of chemical pesticides.

4. Human Health Friendly. Indoor farms will reduce the occupational hazards associated with traditional, horizontal farming. Such risks include: accidents in handling farming equipment, exposure to infectious diseases like malaria, exposure to poisonous chemicals, and confrontations with poisonous or dangerous animals.

5. Reduce Food miles. Most of the vertical farming method is applied in urban areas because the land require is minimal. Hence, the distance of the food to be transported to the consumers is reduced. This reduce the energy wasted on transportation and decrease the environment impact by the transportation on food.

Vertical farming allow urban areas to absorb the expected influx of more population and yet still remain food sufficient. The technology could provide more employment to the rural populace expected to converge to the cities in the years to come.


However, vertical farming is costly and energy inefficient. The extra expenditure will be needed for lighting, heating and power supply will be in excess of the benefits. 
The vertical farming would be too expensive to implement and uncompetitive with traditional horizontal farms which use free natural light. 

In my opinion, vertical farming needed more time to develop. By utilising all the brains on this world, there must be a solution to make it better. 
Of course, a detail cost analysis need to done and study the environmental impact by the vertical farming. 

All this data need to be prepared and shown online, to support the claims that the vertical farming are benefiting the society.

What you need to build a drone for dummies

First of all, this is for dummies only. hehe
For those who have no idea about drone, how it work, but interested about it. Those who already knew about it, you don't have to read this 😝

Ok, what is drone, drone is basically something can fly (of course), by using multi number of rotors.
So what make it different compare to plane, helicopter?
Drone do not have any moving mechanical structure, it change it moving direction by alter the speed of each rotor.
Let say, to let the drone move forward,
the rotors at the back spin faster, lift rear of the drone, make it tilted forward, and produce a forward thrust and lifting thrust at the same time.

So what you need to build a drone?

Motor and propeller

Most of the drone are using brushless outrunner motors. Because they are more powerful and efficient.

Motor and propeller must be match to achieve the best performance.

High rpm motor using shorter propeller, while lower rpm require longer propeller, as it is turning lower, it required to swept more air in lower number of turn to achieve the same thrust.

Theoretically, longer prop are more efficient as they swept larger area of air in one turn. So if you need longer flight time in your drone, choose a low rpm motor.

Electronic speed controller

Short form, ESC. Its main function is to convert dc into ac current.

It varies the speed of motor corresponding to the pwm input to the ESC. It is a must to have this ESC component if you are using brushless motor.

Flight controller

Now, we come to the main part of the drone. Flight controller act like the brain of the drone. It control the motor speed and varies the motor speed in different situation.

Basic principle of flight controller is using gyro and accelerometer sensor to determine the orientation of the drone and giving require output to the motor.
Let say if one side of the drone is falling, the flight controller will output to the motor on the corresponding side to spin faster, until the drone is leveled.
There are different component on different flight controllers, some contain barometer which is used to detect the air pressure. It is mainly used in maintaining altitude.
There are also flight controller that support gps navigation, which means you can add a gps and a compass to utilize the gps coordinate to assist the control of the drone.

Frame

Frame is usually the only part where you could customize in your own way.
The material to consider must be light weight, strong and durable.
Most of the materials used are, carbon fibre, glass fibre, aluminum, abs nylon and 3d printing.
It is better to choose the frame based on what type of motor are using.
The size of the frame should be able to accommodate the length of the propeller.
Too large frame will cause unnecessary weight on the drone which will reduce your flight time.
So choose the frame that is just enough to accommodate the size of the motor and the propeller intended to use.

Radio controller

Radio is one of the most expensive part you should invest on. Quadcopter fly in the air, and you may crash or lost it anytime. 😂😂
Radio control is hold in your hand, it won't break, unless you throw it to the ground. So, radio control is the equipment you want to invest it in one go.
In another way, the better radio controller is, the more safety your could assure on your drone. Less chances to loss signal and loss control of your drone.

Battery

Battery is energy of the drone. 

Make sure the battery used is able to provide sufficient power to the drone to run all the components.

It is also the heaviest part.
It is very important to choose the right battery, high capacity battery certainly provide you longer flight time, but in return causing more weight to the drone. 

The only type of battery that are currently using for drone are Lithium polymer (Lipo) battery and lithium ion battery. They are light in weight and contain lots of power in relatively small size pack. 

The downside of lipo battery is, they are extremely dangerous. Require extra care in charging, discharging and even storing. 

Conclusion, make sure you do enough of study, google-ing before you started to build a drone. This could save you a lot of money. 😜😜

Soldering skill is a plus, it you are good in soldering, it makes your works lot easier.