Carbonic Acid

Rain can dissolve CO2 and make carbonic acid

https://www.visionlearning.com/en/library/Earth-Science/6/The-Carbon-Cycle/95#:~:text=thousands%20of%20years.-,The%20geological%20carbon%20cycle,Rock%20Cycle%20module%20for%20information).

but apparently only for less than a second but it is a important for the formation of limestone. These are some testing done in Berkeley Lab:

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Larger Hydroponics

Arduino controlled hydroponics:

https://www.instructables.com/id/Arduino-Controlled-Smart-Hydroponic-Modular-System/ 

Not quite the same as Carbon Block Aquaponics since it is not solar powered but good information on building a larger hydroponics system and includes a PH meter.

I feel bad I haven’t posted since Toronto Maker Festival. Thanks for all the enthusiastic support expressed at my display table. I am still finalising my product development team before launching on Indiegogo

Rogers Talks

Attended “Rogers Talks” in Ottawa yesterday. After a few introductions as RM Systems Integrators decided to try out “Carbon Block”. In fact I tried it out on the keynote speaker Andy Nulman.

Thinking about the elevator speech. No one denies “Fixing Global Warming” is a noble cause. Everyone is thinking what am I selling. Although I see it as a process, the only device I have now is Aquaponics. There are still bugs to work out but the system from July Maker Festival is still running growing the same tomato plants but I want to re-seed into large pots soon. Unfortunately Ottawa solar is not enough to charge the batteries. I can add more solar panels but that adds more cost.

Big benefit is the device is 100% solar. I haven’t seen any Arduino boards out there yet that skip the voltage regulator. This is a source of constant battery drain. A board with the right I/O and motor drivers could have many solar based applications.

The other item is to start publishing to the cloud. I have a Bluetooth interface but the data doesn’t get transferred anywhere that people could see what is happening. I’ll have to start that soon when regular work stops interfering with this.

Solar Back Pedalling

I said a few times on the weekend at the Maker Festival that the $17 cheap solar panel worked as well as $80 worth of more expensive panels. The cheap panel worked fine in the window of a 7th floor condo where there is a direct view of the western horizon and gets about 7 hours of direct sun. It doesn’t perform so well if it’s facing a tree covered backyard of a townhouse that only gets about 3 hours of direct sunlight. I’ve plugged both panels in now to try to get the batteries back up to their normal levels.

Makerfest Powerpoint

Click below to download the Powerpoint slide deck from the show

aquaponics maskerfest show

Thanks so much to the Science Nerd for writing a comment that we were the best thing at the Fest. Apologies for those looking for my contact info. I realised later it was buried under sponsors so I added an About tab to this site. Oh BTW I also added Aquaponics information under Links.