Regrouping: Two Months Later

To commemorate my almost two month inactivity on DotSlashGarden, I thought I would write a blog post to figure out how I became derailed and how to overcome it.

Derailment

As I had said previously, I became derailed just before starting the implementation phase, which is the most exciting part. There are multiple reasons that caused this:

• Lack of Hardware

In order to start the implementation phase, I require the hardware to build the hydrogarden. The parts that I need are very difficult to get, as I have found. A Raspberry Pi, which is the centrepiece of the automation, has a ship time of about 5 weeks. However, this is no longer an issue as mine came in a week and a half ago (and it's awesome!). The X10 components or similar that will control the on/off devices are seemingly unavailable in any store anywhere. They are available on online stores, like Amazon, but I prefer to buy them in a real store because you can ask employees to ensure that you are indeed purchasing what you want. Maybe I am just old-fashioned... Alas, even seeds are difficult to acquire from local gardening shops because they are out of season. In short, there are a lot of things I still need to buy.

• Post-Summertime Blues

Whilst this does not allocate for the first month of inactivity, I found that just before I went back to school I did not feel like working on this project very much. Now that school is in full swing, I have become very busy with schoolwork and am finding it difficult to even do normal things, let alone work on an automatic garden.

Overcoming Inactivity

To get some serious work done on DotSlashGarden, I need to recreate the schedule that I made in the inception phase. I will do this based on prerequisites of beginning a certain part of the implementation.

• Basic Hydrogarden
• Lettuce seeds - ordered by September 21, 2012
• Hydrogarden apparatus - prototype built by October 1, 2012
• Plants - seeds planted by October 5, 2012
• Basic Automation (e.g. lights)
• X10 components - ordered by September 21, 2012 
• Lighting apparatus - assembled by October 7, 2012
• Integration with control program - coded by October 12, 2012
• Complex Automation (e.g. pH sensor)
• To be planned at a later date - not kidding about the complex part
• Control program
• Alpha build - already complete
• Beta build - October 21, 2012
• Final release - TBA

Whist this will help to ensure the project moves more smoothly in the future, it is merely a guideline and should be expected to change.

September 30: Seeing how I have already failed to complete of the tasks, I think I will adopt the open source scheduling technique, meaning it will be ready when its ready.
 
After all of the items on this list are complete, I should be left with a nice prototype of an automated hydrogarden. That being said, the project will follow the worst is better design model by adding new functionality and features. I have no decided which ideas I should include or in what order to implement them, but that will come later.

After not blogging for so long, it is nice to get back in the swing of things. I am looking forward to starting the implementation phase and I hope it goes more quickly this time!