Edge Collective

Edge Collective is a distributed research, teaching, and facilitation cooperative working to help individuals and communities increase the capacity of their vital food, water, energy, and communications infrastructure to adapt to challenging environments. All of the research, designs, and code that we produce is freely available online. We support our research, projects, and teaching through donations and via 'pay-as-you-can' arrangements.

You can reach us at collaborate (at) edgecollective (dot) io -- cheers!

Projects

Mothbot -- Convivial Radio Microcontroller Design

Designing an accessible and easy-to-assemble radio device for use in environmental monitoring and education.

Updated: 2021-01-12

Developing a Free and Open Source CO2 Sensor System

Developing an Free and Open Source end-to-end system for CO2 monitoring.

Updated: 2020-12-06

Water Level Monitoring on Chappaquiddick Island, Massachusetts (USA)

Radio + WiFi + Ultrasonic tide monitoring.

Updated: 2020-07-17

Greenhouse Monitoring at Wolfe's Neck Farm in Freeport, Maine (USA).

Setting up a LoRa- and WiFi- based greenhouse monitoring system.

Updated: 2020-05-11

Flood Sensing in New Orleans, Louisiana (USA)

Collaborating on the FloodSense project with NOLAFlotilla.

Updated: 2020-05-11

Soil and Greenhouse Monitoring at Quinta Vale da Lama in Odiáxere, Faro District (Portugal)

Prototyping a LoRa- and wifi-based system for Soil moisture and temperature, as well as ambient temperature humidty and soil temperture inside a greenhouse.

Updated: 2020-12-18

Soil Monitoring System in Olathe, Colorado (USA)

Developing a Free and Open Source LoRa-based system (softwarre, hardware); prototyping a remote node for capturing relaying data from an SDI-12 - based soil moisture sensor.

Updated: 2020-05-10

Coastal Tide Monitoring in Belfast, Maine (USA)

(With Dave Sprague and friends in Belfast, ME -- water level via Radio + WiFi + pressure sensor.

Updated: 2020-02-17

Soil Monitoring System in Mead, Nebraska (USA)

Developing a system for capturing soil moisture measurements from a remote field site, using wifi, LoRa, and cellular communications.

Updated: 2019-07-24

Guides

Using Circuitpython to send data to FarmOS

Connecting a Circuitpython sensor to FarmOS, using a 'remote node' + 'single-channel gateway' approach. Specific example uses an Adafruit ItsyBitsy M4, Adafruit LoRa Breakout, and Adafruit Airlift Breakout

Updated: 2020-05-15

Simple Circuitpython LoRa Demo

Simple Circuipython LoRa radio send & receive demo.

Updated: 2020-05-11

Local First Lora Networks

Developing a design for a 'local first' approach to farm networking.

Updated: 2020-05-01

Presentations

Using Dat & Hyper in Agroecology

Video of talk 'Using Dat & the Hyper Stack in Agroecology', presented at the 2020 Dat Conference.

Updated: 2020-08-15

Design Patterns for Degrowth ICT

Video of talk 'Design Patterns for Degrowth ICT', presented at Degrowth Vienna 2020, as well as at SCORAI 2020.

Updated: 2020-06-14

Stewarding Technological Freedom in Agriculture

Video of talk presented at the LibrePlanet2020 conference by Mike Stenta, Jamie Gaehring, and Don Blair

Updated: 2020-04-14

Research Notebook

Irrigation

Notes on technology and analysis related to soil irrigation

Updated: 2021-03-28

Radio Experiments

Notes on experiments with RNode / Signal / APRS

Updated: 2021-02-17

PBot

Passagassawakeag Bot. Environmental monitoring for education, farming, water montoring. Free and Open Source, modular; easy to assemble, easy to deploy, easy to redesign with open source tools.

Updated: 2021-01-25

Flood / Tide Sensor

Flood / tide sensor prototyping

Updated: 2020-01-18

DIY load scale measurement

Load scale measurements using FOS software + hardware

Updated: 2020-12-23

Software Defined Radio (SDR) Experiments

Experiments in software defined radio.

Updated: 2020-12-05

DIY Depth Sensing

Experiments in depth sensing

Updated: 2020-11-25

Compressed air energy storage

Reserach into compressed air energy storage

Updated: 2020-11-25

Off-grid battery control

Omnivore design for a multi-purpose buck/boost battery system

Updated: 2020-11-19

Bluetooth experiments

Experiments with Bluetooth microcontrollers

Updated: 2020-11-15

E-Ink Map Display Prototyping

Setting up a (low power?) E-Ink display with a micro

Updated: 2020-11-08

Greenhouse Monitoring, 'Full Stack'

Instructions for End-to-End Greenhouse monitoring stack

Updated: 2020-11-02

P2P / DIY Server

P2P Farm server prototyping

Updated: 2020-10-20

Microcontroller HID input

Notes on setting up microcontrollers as HID devices

Updated: 2020-10-18

Terrapin Tracking

Notes on animal tracking for conservation

Updated: 2020-10-17

Podcasting Infrastructure

Notes on setting up podcasting infrastructure

Updated: 2020-10-17

Experiments with the Hyper Protocol

Updated: 2020-10-08

Vale da Lama Greenhouse Monitoring

Greenhouse monitoring electronics at Vale da Lama

Updated: 2020-10-20

DIY Conductivity Sensor

Notes on development of DIY conductivity sensors

Updated: 2020-10-01

DIY CO2 Monitoring

Notes on inexpensive CO2 monitoring options

Updated: 2020-10-22

Inexpensive Heltec WiFi + LoRa Gateway Setup

Notes on setting up a Heltec device.

Updated: 2020-09-24

Radiohead LoRa Mesh Field Test

Test of Radiohead mesh networking functionality.

Updated: 2020-09-14

Mothbot Prototyping

Prototyping the Mothbot -- an Arduino-compatible LoRa node for remote monitoring applications.

Updated: 2020-10-05

Meshtastic Test at Newfound Lake

Using the Meshtastic Python API to perform some basic range tests of the Meshtastic system at Newfound Lake in Bristol, NH.

Updated: 2020-08-30

Low Power experiments with SAMD21

Seeing what low current sleep modes are possible with various hardware designs.

Updated: 2020-09-14

Predicting Line-of-Sight Locations

Collecting tools for estimating line-of-sight locations based on topography.

Updated: 2020-08-27

Custom Location for Secure Scuttlebutt Data

How to set up a custom database directory location for Secure Scuttlebutt (SSB) (enabling e.g. storage of SSB on a portable drive).

Updated: 2020-08-26

Simple LoRa Mesh

Experiments with the Radiohead RHMesh approach.

Updated: 2020-08-22

Quahog Debug

Revising the Quahog ESP32 + LoRa circuit

Updated: 2020-08-27

LoRa Mesh Chat

Experimenting with the Meshtastic system for Android + Bluetooth + LoRa mesh networking.

Updated: 2020-09-27

DIY Low Power Radio Nodes

Building radio nodes with an eye towards easy assembly and easy sourcing of parts.

Updated: 2020-08-03