TECHNICAL FIELD OF THE INVENTION

The present invention relates generally to the field of indoor and controlled environment agriculture (CEA). Embodiments of apparatuses and methods according to the present invention help indoor farmers, growers, tinkerers, researchers, students, entrepreneurs and/or other hobbyist or do-it-yourself (DIY) growers more effectively grow plants in an indoor growing system using methods for peripheral device discovery and a structured, data-driven and programmatic approach to using and/or programming recipes for controlling a wide range of peripheral devices involved in the grow process.

BACKGROUND OF THE INVENTION

Earth must figure out how to grow more food, since there will likely be over 10 billion people living on it by 2050. Some estimates have said we will need to grow 75% more food than we currently produce worldwide, but we are already running out of arable land. Additionally, the externalities of global climate change can fundamentally alter the consistency of crop yields, causing potential disruptions to global and local food systems.

Population trends show that humanity is becoming more urbanized, with up to 70% of humans projected to live in a city by 2500. This urbanization is driving the innovation of an indoor farming sector that is creating new kinds of farms. These present unique opportunities to produce fresh and local food such as plants, mushrooms, insects, fish, livestock and others within city limits by using currently available components.

In cities around the world, more entrepreneurs and farmers are turning to controlled environment agriculture (CEA) to help increase yields and otherwise maximize efficiency. CEA allows year-round food production and gives the grower full control of the environmental variables of the system. This allows the grower to create optimized growing conditions, year-round, while situated nearby end consumers. By removing the externalities of growing outside, where crops are exposed to weather, farmers do not have to worry about drought, frost, heat, or most pests. Farmers with the ability to control light, temperature, humidity, CO2, nutrients, air flow, and other environmental controls have been able to greatly increase plant yields as well as test new growing paradigms to improve other efficiencies and enhance flavors.

One driver of indoor agriculture has been the exponential reduction in cost of light-emitting diode (LED) technology. Haitz's law (AKA Moore's law for LEDS) has projected that “every decade, the cost per lumen (unit of useful light emitted) falls by a factor of 10, and the amount of light generated per LED package increases by a factor of 20, for a given wavelength (color) of light.” In practical terms, the costs of LEDs drop every 18 months while they double in power. These changes have led to an economic inflection point so that certain crops can now be grown indoors, locally to their end consumers, at a price comparable to those generated using traditional field agriculture.

With the decreased cost and improved quality of lighting technology, there has been an explosion of new types of indoor growing systems, such as hydroponics, aeroponics, and aquaponics. These systems offer new ways to deliver local, fresh produce within cities around the world. One key hydroponics sales pitch is that it uses 70-90% less water than traditional field agriculture.

With the development of these technologies as well as new economic opportunities of growing competitively priced and high-quality crops indoors, there has been a follow-on of investment. In 2017 alone, indoor hydroponic companies received over $300 million of venture investments, headlined by over $200 million going to California startup Plenty, and over $100 million invested in Aerofarms in New Jersey.

A new generation of farmers are discovering new opportunities to grow food indoors in cities and ultimately create sustainable indoor farm businesses. For example, in New York City alone, there are over 30 different urban farms, with the majority of these being indoor, CEA operations. Two notable examples are Square Roots, which is an urban-farming accelerator using shipping container farms to grow high-quality leafy greens in the city, and Farm. One, which produces high-quality and local produce and rare herbs for chefs from two indoor, LED-powered farms in a basement and a spare room in a culinary school in NYC.

In addition to food production, the exponential drop in LED lighting technology has helped drive the growth of thecannabismarket, with the total market expected to double between 2017 and 2021. This market has been driven by loosening ofcannabislaws in states such as California, Oregon, Colorado, Vermont, Massachusetts, and others. Because of the short growing seasons in many of these states, much growing is done indoors in controlled environments. There is a tremendous amount of overlap in the products and technology that is used to grow food or growcannabis, and when you walk into a hydroponic garden center, you often see the same products being sold to both types of farmers. Thus, the economic benefits of creating newcannabis-growing technology can bring down costs of creating healthy food at the same time.

Despite the presence of hydroponic farmers and entrepreneurs in the space, there is a lack of connectivity between any of the control systems and components that exist in any grow. As a matter of design, every grower's system can be totally unique in the presence and configuration of the exact hardware components. There currently is no solution that can enable the grower to connect to all of the individual devices to operate them in a connected and coordinated manner.

Currently many of these devices are built with “smart”, IoT capabilities, however each individual hardware company chooses one ‘spectrum’ and builds their own back end software to connect to the internet or other cloud-enabled services. There are 7 primary spectrums that these devices use: Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, Z-wave, Zigbee, X-bee, Lora and Thread, and it is impossible for devices to be inter-connected if they are on different spectrums. Additionally, each company has developed its own ‘API’ (Application Programming Interface) that enables it to communicate with outside services or data sources. The challenge is that each API is unique in its design, data model and capabilities and does not easily interact or interface with other components from other manufacturers.

In order for any hardware company to manage any of these interconnections, it must manage a complex and extensive mapping of other peripheral hardware based on “many-to-many” relationships of managing many individual connections on a one on one basis. Right now, with the current state of IoT software and platforms available, any component cannot easily talk to any other component. In order to give the grower access to everything in one place, they would need to manage interconnections to every other device in the market.

With the lack of technology, growers and farmers are forced to buy either inoperable or analog products that do not meet the goals of even the most basic Internet of Things (IoT) devices. Many end up using manual outlet timers, analog sensors, and entire ranges of lights, fans, and pumps with only on/off features, making smart growing difficult or impossible. There is thus a world of data that is not captured in CEA that could lead to new improvements, innovations, and economic opportunities.

SUMMARY OF SOME EMBODIMENTS OF THE INVENTION

Some embodiments of the present invention provide apparatuses and methods that serve as the operating system that manages the “roads and bridges” for all components (e.g., peripheral devices including sensors and other devices) to communicate with each other seamlessly within the context of, for example, and indoor and controlled environment agriculture (CEA) grow. For example, instead of the industry managing ever changing interconnections of APIs and data protocols, peripheral devices may connect one-to-one with an electronic device that can communicate with all such peripheral devices. In accordance with some embodiments of the present invention, this electronic device is sometimes referred to herein as the “Grow Computer” or “GrowHub” or “Gateway”. In some embodiments of the present invention, the electronic device may utilize standard APIs for hardware companies to connect, and a SDK for software companies to seamlessly connect to everything else in these spaces. By going from many-to-many to one-to-one, transaction and development fees and expenditure of resources on each new grow or farming operation can be significantly reduced. Standardized data and business terms in a digital market can also open up exciting new market opportunities with increased efficiencies gained.

In some embodiments of the present invention, an electronic device is provided that includes one or more wireless communication interfaces (e.g., Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, Z-wave, Zigbee, X-bee, Lora, Thread, TCP/IP, 3G, 4G, and 5G) configured for coupling to one or more peripherals, the one or more peripheral devices comprising at least one of a light for illuminating a grow, a water pump for supplying water to the grow, a fan for circulating air to the grow, an air pump for oxygenating water for the grow, a heater for increasing a temperature ambient to the grow, and a chiller for decreasing a temperature ambient to the grow. For example, each of the above peripheral devices may communicate with the electronic device using different one(s) of the electronic device's wireless communication interfaces or via direct, wired connections. The electronic device may further include one or more processors configured to control the one or more peripheral devices via the one or more wireless communication interfaces.

In some embodiments of the present invention, an electronic device and corresponding method are provided for automatic control of an indoor agriculture growing environment over a life cycle of a grow. The electronic device may include one or more wireless communication interfaces configured to couple wirelessly to a plurality of peripheral devices of an indoor agriculture growing environment, the plurality of peripheral devices comprising at least two of a light for illuminating a grow, a water pump for supplying water to the grow, a fan for circulating air to the grow, an air pump for oxygenating water for the grow, a heater for increasing a temperature ambient to the grow, and a chiller for decreasing a temperature ambient to the grow. Again, in some embodiments, each of the above peripheral devices may communicate with the electronic device using different one(s) of the electronic device's wireless communication interfaces. The electronic device may further include memory configured to store computer program instructions comprising a recipe identifying environmental conditions for the grow and for automating over a life cycle of the grow the control of the plurality of peripheral devices via the one or more wireless communication interfaces. In addition, the electronic device may include one or more processors coupled to the memory and configured to execute the computer program instructions of the recipe to automatically control the plurality of peripheral devices over the life cycle of the grow via the one or more wireless communication interfaces.

In some embodiments, the electronic device is further configured such that the one or more wireless communication interfaces couple wirelessly to one or more sensors (e.g., at least one of a temperature sensor, camera, light sensor, pH sensor, humidity or moisture sensor, oxygen sensor, CO2 sensor, electrical conductivity sensor, environmental sensor, plant sensor, biology sensor, water sensor, electrical sensor, and power sensor). In some embodiments, the recipe may utilize information received from the one or more sensors, and the one or more processors may be configured to execute the computer program instructions of the recipe to control, based at least in part on the information received from the one or more sensors, the plurality of peripheral devices via the one or more wireless communication interfaces.

For example, in some embodiments of the present invention, the one or more sensors includes a temperature sensor. A corresponding grow recipe would include computer instructions for achieving a predetermined temperature at a particular time, and based at least in part on temperature information received by the one or more processors from the temperature sensor, the one or more processors may be configured to automatically control at least one of the heater for increasing a temperature ambient to the grow and the chiller for decreasing a temperature ambient to the grow.

As another example, in some embodiments of the present invention, the one or more sensors includes a humidity or moisture sensor, the recipe includes computer program instructions for achieving a predetermined humidity at a particular time, and based at least in part on humidity information received by the one or more processors from the humidity or moisture sensor, the one or more processors may be configured to automatically control the water pump for supplying water to the grow.

In some embodiments, the plurality of peripheral devices includes a light for illuminating a grow, a water pump for supplying water to the grow, a fan for circulating air to the grow, and at least one of a heater for increasing a temperature ambient to the grow and a chiller for decreasing a temperature ambient to the grow. The memory of the electronic device may be configured to store computer program instructions including the recipe identifying environmental conditions for the grow and for automating over a life cycle of the grow the control of the plurality of peripheral devices via the one or more wireless communication interfaces. The computer instructions may automatically perform one or more (e.g., all of) the following operations at specific times over the life cycle of the grow or under specific conditions during the life cycle of the grow: turning on and off the light for illuminating the grow; turning on and off the water pump for supplying water to the grow; turning on and off the fan for circulating air to the grow; and turning on and off the at least one of a heater for increasing a temperature ambient to the grow and a chiller for decreasing a temperature ambient to the grow (e.g., wherein turning on a peripheral device includes supply power to the device previously in an “off” state and/or regulating the extent to which the peripheral is operating). The one or more processors coupled to the memory may be configured to execute the computer program instructions of the recipe to control the plurality of peripheral devices over the life cycle of the grow via the one or more wireless communication interfaces.

In some embodiments of the present invention, an electronic device and corresponding method are provided for automatic control of an indoor agriculture growing environment. The electronic device may include computer memory and a plurality of wireless communication interfaces comprising one or more of (e.g., at least two, three, four, five or all) of WiFi, Bluetooth, Zigbee, Xbee, TCP/IP, 3G, 4G, 5G, and LoRa (e.g., at least two of WiFi, Bluetooth, Zigbee, Xbee, and LoRa). The electronic device may be configured to receive via the plurality of wireless communication interfaces, prior to the electronic device wirelessly pairing with a plurality of peripheral devices comprising at least two of a light for illuminating a grow, a water pump for supplying water to the grow, a fan for circulating air to the grow, an air pump for oxygenating water for the grow, a heater for increasing a temperature ambient to the grow, and a chiller for decreasing a temperature ambient to the grow, a pre-pairing data signal from each of the at least two peripherals identifying one or more of (e.g., at least two, three, four or all of) the device manufacturer, version, device type, distance, battery life, timestamp information, and/or other device identifying information. The electronic device may further include one or more processors coupled to the computer memory and configured to store in the computer memory a registry of all of the plurality of peripheral devices for which the pre-pairing data signal is received via the a plurality of wireless communication interfaces.

In some embodiments, based at least in part on the plurality of peripheral devices identified in the registry, the one or more processors is configured to run computer program instructions including a recipe identifying environmental conditions for the grow and for automating over a life cycle of the grow the control of the plurality of peripheral devices via the one or more wireless communication interfaces.

In some embodiments, the one or more processors is configured to communicate with a server storing a plurality of recipes, and the one or more processors is configured to download the computer program instructions comprising the recipe for use with the plurality of peripheral devices from the server (e.g., downloading a recipe that matches the profile of peripheral devices with which the electronic device has communicated and are identified in a registry associated with the electronic device).

In some embodiments, subsequent to receiving the pre-pairing data signal for each of the plurality of peripheral devices, the one or more processors is configured to assign a unique identifier to each of the plurality of peripheral devices.

In some embodiments, the one or more processors is configured to store each of the unique identifiers in the computer memory.

In some embodiments, the one or more processors is configured to wirelessly transmit each of the unique identifiers to the corresponding peripheral device.

In some embodiments, the one or more processors is configured to run the computer program instructions for controlling the plurality of peripheral devices after pairing with the plurality of peripheral devices via the one or more wireless communication interfaces.

In some embodiments, the one or more processors is configured to receive via one of the plurality of wireless communication interfaces an additional pre-pairing data signal from an additional peripheral device, the additional pre-pairing data signal identifying one or more of (e.g., at least two, three, four and/or all of) the device manufacturer, version, device type, distance, battery life, timestamp information, and/or additional device information for the additional peripheral device. The one or more processors may be further configured to store in the computer memory registry information regarding the additional peripheral device. In addition, the one or more processors may be further configured to identify and run new computer program instructions comprising a new recipe identifying environmental conditions for the grow and for automating over a life cycle of the grow the control of the plurality of peripheral devices and the additional peripheral device via the one or more wireless communication interfaces.

In some embodiments, the one or more processors may be configured to identify and run new computer program instructions comprising the new recipe subsequent to providing information regarding the additional peripheral device to a server storing a plurality of recipes and downloading the new computer program instructions comprising the new recipe from the server.

The foregoing examples are only illustrative and the additional implementations and details are within the scope of other embodiments of the present invention. For example, in some embodiments of the present invention, the electronic device further includes memory configured to store computer program instructions including a recipe for powering peripherals on and off. The one or more processors may be configured to execute the computer program instructions to selectively enable power to a plurality of outlets (e.g., outlets integrated as part of the electronic device).

In some embodiments, an electronic device is provided that includes a housing and one or more outputs configured for coupling to one or more peripherals, the one or more peripherals generally include many of: a light for illuminating a grow, a water pump for supplying water to the grow, a fan for circulating air to the grow, an air pump for oxygenating water for the grow, a heater for increasing a temperature ambient to the grow, and a chiller for decreasing a temperature ambient to the grow. The electronic device also includes one or more processors within the housing, the one or more processors configured to selectively enable or disable and/or control the one or more peripherals by controlling the one or more external outputs.

In some embodiments, the computer program instructions include a recipe for controlling the powering on and off of all of the lights and illumination hardware within a grow, the water pump for supplying water to the grow, the fan for circulating air to the grow, the air pump for oxygenating water for the grow, the heater for increasing a temperature ambient to the grow, and the chiller for decreasing a temperature ambient to the grow. The one or more processors may be configured to execute the computer program instructions to selectively enable power to two or more of the plurality of outlets to control power to the peripherals.

In some embodiments, the electronic device further includes one or more wired or wireless connections configured for coupling to one or more sensors. In some embodiments, these inputs enable two-way communication and enable the electronic device to control the sensors. The one or more sensors may include (e.g., all) of a temperature sensor, camera, light sensor, pH sensor, and electrical conductivity sensor. The one or more sensors may include at least one (e.g., all) of an environmental, plant, biology, water, electrical, light, and power sensor. In some embodiments, the one or more inputs connect to the sensors via one of, for example, 7 wireless protocols (Wi-Fi Blue Tooth, Z-wave, Zigbee, X-bee, Lora and Thread).

In some embodiments, the electronic device further includes memory for storing environmental data collected by the one or more sensor(s). In some embodiments, the electronic device further includes memory for storing at least one of results by time and data indicating the status of the one or more outputs over time.

In some embodiments, the device is able to connect to outside peripherals that are able to program smart outlets or specific circuits and can sense power provided to each one of the one or more outputs via wireless protocol.

In some embodiments, the electronic device further includes one or more power-sensing sensors built into electrical management devices for sensing power provided to all of the one or more outputs to determine the total power consumption of all peripherals coupled to the electronic device.

In some embodiments, the electronic device further includes a network interface for communication with another device on the same local network.

In some embodiments, the electronic device includes a network interface for communication with a web server over the Internet. In some embodiments, the one or more processors of the electronic device is configured to download, via communication with the web server over the Internet, computer program instructions comprising a recipe for controlling the one or more peripherals.

In some embodiments, apparatuses and methods according to the present invention receive and process one or more environmental sensor inputs through central computer hardware and selectively enable one or more outputs including, for example, outbound alternating current (AC) power circuits, to control coupled (e.g., plugged in) lights, pumps, heating, ventilation, and/or air conditioning devices, and/or other actuators or devices. In some embodiments, the apparatuses and methods run unique climate recipes, which, for example, may be pre-installed on a control device or accessed by the control device via download over a connected network, and which may govern the control of coupled devices according to particular sensor-based, time-based, and/or other rules. In some embodiments, the apparatuses and methods described herein enable end-user programming and/or sharing of unique climate recipes for controlling devices coupled to apparatuses described herein.

The foregoing description and summary is by way of example only and is non-limiting, and additional embodiments of the present invention are described below.

