In this log, I want to lay out the rough roadmap that came to mind — a path that I hope will help kickstart the dream of:

a) Making our family vineyard smart and remotely monitored, to reduce repetitive and laborious tasks
b) Building an outdoor lab where, one day, kids can learn and connect with nature
c) Creating a small, futuristic space inspired by the 2014 movie Transcendence (without the evil side)
d) Making the vineyard resilient — a sustainable place that could survive a brutal, resource-scarce, post-apocalyptic world... like Bill and Frank’s sanctuary in The Last of Us

All of these visions excite me. But I’m not sure which one is the ultimate goal. What I do know is this: I have a few core values that will guide me through this unmapped journey. I’m writing them down here to serve as a compass for myself — and maybe, as a lighthouse for you, reader — in case something here speaks to you, and you want to walk a little of this road with me.

If any of these resonated with you, I can't wait to meet you and walk this road together.

Let me show you how I imagine the vineyard:

As you can see there's a central control unit, a Raspberry pi zero 2w, which gathers data from distributed IoT sensors using ESP32 microcontrollers. As the vineyard is off-grid, both the Raspberry Pi and the ESP32s will be solar powered and will have battery for continuous operation. The raspberry pi may then be connected to the internet using cellular network (no WiFi available) to upload the data to a cloud database in order to monitor the vineyard from anywhere. If we manage to set this up, then sky is the limit. We could build a DIY mobile platform for fertilizing or monitoring of the vineyard. There's an abandoned pig farm nearby which we could use as a garage to park the robot safely. This could also serve as a multi-purpose area for events workshops etc etc...

But as in every ambitious plan, we need to take this step by step.

The project begins as an abstract idea, but it starts with buying some electronics, haha.  Our rule is always one: 

Buy the cheapest you can find!

So, how do we begin? 

I am thinking of two clear steps that require effort but will give us a lot of valuable knowledge and insights and really sky-rocket the project:

1) build and test a solar and battery powered esp32

2) build and test solar powered raspberry pi 

The reason why we start with the esp32 is that it requires less power than the raspberry pi, which will be more challenging to power using sun.

Moreover, my experience with solar panel project is zero, so it will be a great chance to familiarise myself with that and learn from the problems that will definitely arise.

Stay tuned, and feel free to get in touch