Technabob » farm

AirDrop Irrigation System Makes Water Appear out of Thin Air, Charges Nothing for the Trick

Lambert Varias — Wed, 09 Nov 2011 16:00:31 +0000

The winner of this year’s James Dyson Award may not be a high-tech smartphone or some other exciting consumer product, but it is innovative and most importantly very practical. Invented by Edward Linnacre, a student at the Swinburne University in Melbourne, Australia, the AirDrop Irrigation system condenses water vapor from the surrounding air and turns it into water.

The AirDrop works like a refrigerator or an air conditioner. But whereas water is just a byproduct in the other two devices, it’s the main output in this instance. An air turbine intake near the top of the device sucks air in, which is then cooled by the surrounding soil as it passes through the copper tubing to facilitate condensation. The collected water is then pumped out through a semi-permeable hose to the roots of plants. The parts that need power – the turbine and the pump – get their juice from a battery, which in turn is charged by the solar panel on top of the device.

Here’s Gizmag’s interview with Linnacre:

Click to View Embedded Video Clip

Good man. Linnacre and his university were each awarded £10,000 (~$16,000 USD) for his invention. Linnacre, who invented the AirDrop as a potential aid to drought-stricken farmers, plans to use his winnings to further develop his device. I hope he succeeds. I also hope Apple doesn’t sue him.

[James Dyson Award via OhGizmo!, Gizmag & Fast Co. Design]

Harry Potter Maize Maze: Sending Him Off in Style

Range — Tue, 12 Jul 2011 11:58:24 +0000

Unless you’ve been living under a rock, you’ll be fully aware that the final Harry Potter movie is coming out this week. Apparently, people are celebrating (and commiserating) this all over the world. Check out what a farmer in the UK decided to do with his corn field.

Farmer Top Pearsy decided to create a Harry Potter corn maze, which he calls a Maize Maze in York, England. It was unveiled in photos yesterday, and I have to say that it looks pretty impressive. It always amazes me when I see stuff like this. I just wonder how it was exactly designed and laid out. Maybe Google Earth helped.

Needless to say that fans everywhere will be mourning the end of the beloved movie series. To be honest, after the last book was released in 2007, I kind stop watching the movies. Maybe it’s time to watch them again.

[via Design You Trust]

Russian Cow Barn Gets High Tech, Cows Get to Watch HDTV

Lambert Varias — Tue, 23 Mar 2010 12:09:09 +0000

A loving and deep-pocketed farmer read somewhere that dairy cows that see green fields all the time are happier and produce more milk. So he bought a bunch of Samsung 40″ Series 7 LED TVs and had them installed in his cow barn, so now his cows can watch “a non-stop loop of world’s recognized green Swiss Alpine fields.”

Or can they? Can cows look up? And if so, can they look up for long periods of time? The farmer is now measuring the milk production of the bourgeois cows against the ones who have no TVs. Hit up English Russia for more pics.

[via The Raw Feed]

The Real Alien Ant Farm

Technabob — Sat, 30 May 2009 14:06:49 +0000

Remember playing with ant farms when you were a kid? You know, the type where you’d get sand all over the place and proceed to kill all of your insect friends within a matter of minutes as you tried to fill it up? Or when they’d all escape and start gnawing on your arm? It looks like the good old ant farm has gotten a modern update.

Created by Uncle Milton’s (the same guys who made the original ant farm over 50 years ago), this updated version features a brightly illuminated green environment for your 6-legged friends to crawl around in. Instead of sand, the tunnels are loaded with a moist, nutritious green gel (I prefer to call it goo). The see-through colony is designed to be break-proof and escape-proof, so that should keep the ants inside where they belong.

The entire contraption is illuminated LEDs to give you a bright, up-close-and-personal view of your budding ant civilization. You can even connect multiple farms to create a massive above-ground ant city. All you need is a magnifying glass and the power of the sun, and you’ll be all set.

If you don’t have any spare ants lying around, Uncle Milton’s will ship you about 25 to 30 (non-breeding) harvester worker ants to populate your world with (assuming you can wait the requisite 3 to 6 weeks for delivery).

You can grab the Uncle Milton’s LED Gel Ant Farm over at Entertainment Earth for $29.99 (USD).