By dorn on
Topic Type
Question

This will be a great farm hack tool entry! I look forward to seeing the material and construction details. A video of moving it would be cool too. This is something that we would be interested in building on our farm.

Forums
Low-cost mobile hoophouse
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I would welcome some advice on putting together material and construction details. Is there an approved format (examples)? I'm also very interested in feedback and discussion on methods for making the moving process faster/more efficient. Fully anchoring the houses in spring/summer/fall is also a work in progress and I would welcome community input. Also, the wheel assemblies are basically separate units/ although not at all complex. Should they be described as a separate entry? Also#2 we had to build a small bender to create the "Gothic arch" bends at the peaks. This would be best described as a semi-funtional prototype. Should that get it's own entry? Tim
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Right now Fido - Greenhouse Monitoring with Text Message Alerts is our most complete example. You can edit Fido's Tool Wiki to see how some of the formatting is achieved. You will also find some good examples over at the Tool section on http://publiclaboratory.com/tools (our #1 influence for the current Tool section). Feel free to ask me questions directly (http://www.farmhack.org/user/8/contact), I would be more than happy to help out and I am working on the website so our discussions may lead to usability improvements for other users as well.
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Hi Tim, I am so glad that you posted. I think your post is already a valuable contribution. You have just illustrated where we are with the Farm Hack site - you are on the leading edge of helping to develop the standard for documentation and templates. It was on my "to-do" list to try and post a sample template for community review this week, but I think that a good guideline might be that each entry eventually reach a stage where anyone, anywhere would be able to reproduce and operate the tool using the tool wiki and forum. Some standard components will be a bill of materials, cut lists where appropriate, materials sourcing, and as many technical drawings/CAD/sketchup type files as possible, and then use of sequential photos/videos for the "how to" use and build sections which would follow an instructables like format. I am facing some of the same organization questions as I start to post several projects from my farm- some of which have many sub-components to them. I would recommend that you try to post separate entries for each section of your design - say one for the movable tunnel as a whole, then one for the wheel assembly and another for the hoop bender. The more descriptive you can be in the titles of the tools and entries the better. The movable tunnel as a "meta tool" could then link to the sub-components that you have developed. I think this would enable others to start new threads for other approaches which could also be linked to the original mobile tunnel entry. I hope others jump in on this conversation too - I think it is important. There is a general discussion going on in the forum discussing how the community wants to handle the approval process, structure, sorting, searches etc. I would encourage you to jump in to the dialog there as well! http://www.farmhack.org/forums/do-we-want-tool-approval-process