Louis

I am Louis Thiery and I like to play with electronics. My first exposure to farming was this summer when I spent 3 months WWOOF'ing in Colorado – I loved the work and the lifestyle but wanted to find a way to integrate my specialized interests and skills. As I paged through catalogues for farm electronics, I was a little surprised how expensive the devices were. In addition, all the technology was closed and standardized which didn't make sense for small farmers who run idiosyncratic farms and like to tinker with their devices. Thus I decided I'd start working on open-source electronics for farmers, giving myself an opportunity to further my skill set while also attempting to make these technologies more accessible and individualized. I'm currently living in Milford, NH and working from the Gardenbot. [this comment was migrated from the old Farm Hack Forum, it was originally posted on 11/24/2011]

I think it ties the name and concept together perfectly.

Spent all day working on the user list management, their user groups, and can now program via text message! I'm starting to run low on memory though... Right now, you can definitely program and reprogram it with text messages and other users can join by text message too. Once I have the whole program consolidated (I'm working on two different programs that I will merge soon), I will work on adding some bells and whistles like human readable commands like RJ was saying. However, I think that we will run out of space very fast that way so I will first start on user management commands, like seeing if a user exists and removing users. Insofar as programming FOR people via web service, it would definitely be neat! I don't think it will even take any extra code to make Fido run with it.

Nope - I think I came up with it around the same time that you did! Anyway, I've been thinking about the protocol and how this could work and have the following proposal: Fido will be programmable and reprogrammable by text message. You can text a bunch of different numbers separated by commas to program it all in one text (in some predetermined sequence so Fido knows what to do with it) or you can write some keyword followed by a number to change only a certain preference as RJ specified above. I also think that I will implement some basic "usergroups". First off, Fido will answer any text message not started with '#' by telling the person the current time, UNLESS privacy is turned on (owner will be told that someone unauthorized is texting in this case). When privacy is on, only known numbers can ask for current. Fido can remember up to 16 numbers plus the owner. Anybody can text '#' followed by the 4 number PIN determined by owner, followed by: - nothing or '0': they will be allowed to text for current even if privacy is on and they will get emergency text messages - '1': above, plus they will get daily summaries - '2': above, plus they will get updates throughout the day (ie: they get all the communications that owner gets) Only owner can reprogram and remove users. Anyway, I thought that incrementing of permissions made practical sense but let me know what you guys think. Also, let me know if you think anything is unclear or could be simplified!