 Good morning and welcome to this week's edition of Encompass Live. I am your host, Krista Porter, here at the Nebraska Library Commission. Encompass Live is the commission's weekly webinar series where we cover a variety of topics that may be of interest to libraries. We broadcast the show live every Wednesday morning at 10 a.m. central time. But if you're unable to join us on Wednesdays, that's fine. We do record the show as we are doing today and it will be available for you to watch later at your convenience. And I will show you at the end of today's show where you can access all of our show archives. For those of you not from the Nebraska Library Commission, the Library Commission is the state agency for libraries. We are similar to your state library. So we have shows on Encompass Live that could be for all types of libraries because we provide services and programming and resources to all types of libraries in the state. So public, academic, K-12, museums, correctional facilities, historical societies, all sorts of things. Really our only criteria is that it's something to do with libraries. Some of the local libraries are doing something we think they could be doing. We bring, we have a Nebraska Library Commission staff that sometimes do presentations about services or programs or things we're specifically doing here. But we bring guest speakers sometimes as well. And we have a mixture of that kind of today. Today is the last Wednesday of the month. So it is pretty sweet tech day. Yay. Which is, yeah. On Wednesday of every month, Amanda Sweet, our technology innovation librarian here at the Nebraska Library Commission, she comes on and talks about something techy related. We may have other shows about tech related things throughout the month too, but you can always count on Wednesdays. The last Wednesday of the month will always be Amanda talking about something like that. She's here with us today, of course, but she has brought, we have invited some guest speakers to come in to join us. And I will, and they're going to talk about this really cool project. I think it's so much fun, Farm Bot, going, going veggies and things with robots, which yes, just blows my mind, but it'll be cool. So Amanda, why don't you explain, you know, how we, you saw this presentation previously. Yeah. So I actually, I think we first met when you showed me Misty at one of the conferences, Dan. Yeah, I think that it's Internet Librarian. Go to meetings every, go to conference every year. And, you know, I've brought our now robots, Misty robot, and most recently, this Farm Bot project. It's, and then when I saw this, I was like, Nebraska robots, Farm Bots. Agriculture, absolutely. Yes. So we reached out to Dan and her team here, some of the members of the team to come talk to us about their project. So I'm really excited to hear about it, especially, you know, like you said, robots, agriculture, Girl Scouts, I mean, what could, nothing not to like here. So I think I'll hand it over to you, Dan, to talk about, you know, introduce yourself and take it away and tell us all about your project. Okay. Thank you so much, Kristen and Amanda. It's an honor to be here today. So hello everybody. I cannot see you, but my name is Dan low. I'm the library program coordinator at Colorado City Library. Joining me here today, Susan and Navica from space cookies space cookies have been instrumental in our farm bot project, and they played a vital role in making this project a success. Susan, would you like to introduce yourself first. Thank you. So my name is Susan, and I'm been a mentor with space cookies for 10 years. And one of the areas that I spend a lot of time on is community outreach. Since we are a Girl Scout troop, serving the community is very important to us. And so when the library called and said, could you help us build this robot we were more than happy to do so. Having a robotics project is just incredibly exciting to the girls, because that's what they join our Girl Scout troop to do. One of the girls who worked on the farm bot was Navica. And she's here with us today and I'm going to let her introduce herself and tell you a little something about space cookies. Thank you. Hi everyone, I'm Navica. I'm a senior in high school and I've been a member of space cookies for four years. Over those years I've learned a ton about designing a robots to complete the annual assigned tasks and also collaboration within our team of 56 girls from 24 high schools, based in the San Francisco Bay Area. I've also been a member of Girl Scout since first grade and I've worked on a lot of outreach in the past to help bring STEM and robotics to more people. Okay. Thank you, Susan and Navica. So we are very excited to share our farm bot project with you today here. Farm bot is an agriculture robot like Chris already guessed out and Amanda already saw it. But we built it from scratch with the invaluable help of our amazing community. Farm bot is a very versatile machine that can perform a wide range of tasks, like sowing seeds, watering plants and capturing images. We have also implemented and executed several programs with great success. So you may be curious about the motivations behind this project and the process of the robots creation. Today, we're going to provide you with insights into the background of our project, the challenges we encountered during its development, a glimpse into the capabilities of the bot, and ultimately the lessons we learned along the way. So about six years ago, our library embarked on a series of grant funded robotics programs, recognizing the immense value they hold in promoting digital literacy. So like Amanda already mentioned, our libraries have two beloved robots previously, Dewey and LC, Dewey and our robot and LC and Misty robot have been instrumental in engaging our customers through coding workshops and their interactive performances in various programs and events. These programs made an impact in the community and won two national awards for the library. Joining inspirations from the success of these programs, we took the decision to venture into the farm bot project. So just before the onset of the pandemic, we submitted a proposal to the Pacific Library partnership, outlining our vision for the farm bot. Recognizing the uncertainty ahead, we meticulously planned for various scenarios, including the worst case scenario of having to build a bot using our in-house talent. Fortunately, the Pacific Library partnership shared our enthusiasm and commitment to this project. They graciously sponsored our initiative with an innovation grant, allowing us to bring our vision to life. To capture the essence of this project and its significance within the library community, we named it Harvest at the Library. Now we often joke internally that it takes an entire city to build a farm bot, but that statement isn't far from the truth. Throughout our journey, we have received tremendous support from various city departments, especially during the challenging times of the pandemic. The Mitchell Park Community Center graciously offered a home for the farm bot, providing a dedicated space for its operations. The fire department played a vital role by conducting necessary fire inspections to ensure safety protocols were met for this project. The IT department stepped in and installed a new network specifically designed to support the robots operations, ensuring the seamless connectivity and data transfer. Additionally, the Public Works Department played a crucial role in providing essential access to electricity and water, enabling the farm bot to function optimally. None of this would have been possible without the incredible involvement of the space cookies. They have been at the very heart of this project, assisting the library in assembling both the planter and the farm bot itself. Their expertise and dedication have been invaluable throughout the entire process. Together, this collaborative effort demonstrates the immense power of community support and highlights the incredible teamwork involved in bringing the farm bot project to life. Now let's take a look at the basic timeline of our project. It encompassed various stages starting from the initial planning phase, followed by design and procedure development. We dedicated significant time to hammer out the necessary preparation work, ensuring we had a solid foundation for the project. Then we move on to building the hardware components of the farm bot and tune it with the software. The entire process spanned from 2020 to 2022, overlapping with the pandemic. It's a testament to the determination and the resilience of our team. Finally, after extensive testing and refinement, we proudly launched our programs, putting the farm bot to work and showcasing its remarkable capabilities to the community. Indeed, the path from the initial grant proposal to a fully realized project has been a long and arduous journey. Along the way, we encountered numerous surprises and faced the various challenges that tested our problem solving skills. Out of all the robot projects we have undertaken, I must say that the farm bot project stands out as the most complex and challenging one to date. So our journey began with the selection of the desired farm bot model. The farm bot company offered two options, the farm bot genesis and the farm bot express. To make an informed decision, we conducted several research to compare these models. Farm bot express caught our attention at first with its ready to use appeal. It came pre-built, requiring only placement on a planter to initiate its operations. Additionally, the express model boasted a more affordable price point, making it an attractive option at first glance. However, we soon discovered that farm bot express was a relatively new product, and the company had not yet resolved all the issues within the system. While the genesis model came at a higher cost and required more effort on our part as we had to assemble everything using the provided kit, its reliability and quality were well established. The genesis model had been in production for around four to five years by that time, ensuring that any potential issues had been resolved. Moreover, the use of the Raspberry Pi 3 in the genesis model provided enhanced computational power than the Raspberry Pi compared to the Raspberry Pi 0 in the express model. We decided that the farm bot genesis model was the most suitable choice for our project. I do have a question about that. Are there any other companies that do this besides farm bot, or are they just the one? At that time, we think this is the most reliable choice at the moment, because this is an agricultural robot, especially those ones facing the end consumers. It's not that big a market. That's the only one we know at that time. I'm sure there are others now. And like I said, that protective one being around for at least five years definitely has a good track record, of course. Yes, and it started as an open source project, starting in somebody's backyard. So it's a good option for us. All right, thank you. I dug around looking for that too, because that was like, that sounds kind of cool. And there's some like instructions on instructables from people who put stuff together. I'm pretty sure communities' eyes would cross trying to go through that and follow and like, do they update their code? Do they maintain it? That's a good point. They do have like a community website. So if you're a developer, they also have a developer portal. So people sharing things they do with farm bot or issues they run into with farm bot on those platforms. And it's open to everyone. And that's why I love that slide where you have the who's involved section on there. Because most of those robot teams for those like tech gadgets, they only talk about the design process of the robot itself. But I love how this actually digs into everything that it takes and like all the different teams and subgroups that need the input and how to find alignment across all of them. And it's like, you go farm bot. That's actually a very time consuming process because it happens, you know, right at the moment pandemic was taking on. So it takes more longer time. And I have to give, you know, credit to the Pacific Library partnership, some credit again, because usually they're their grant period is only one year. But due to the pandemic, they graciously offered us more time to working on it. It's awesome. The one good thing that did come out of the pandemic. Yep. Okay, I'll move on to continue. Okay. So, unlike the other robots we have at the library farm but requires a dedicated and secure physical space, as well as reliable access to internet water and electricity. Initially, we had planned to utilize the outdoor yard on the second floor of one of our branch. However, after conducting building inspections, it became evident that that location is not ideal. So fortunately, the community center step in and great generously offered us a location that made all the necessary requirements. The location happened to be right next to the library. This kind of gesture from the community center provided us with the perfect environment to house and operate to the farm bot. Now the next crucial step was to find a suitable planter that would seamlessly integrate with this robot. In researching the elevated planter market, we discovered that the available options were quite limited. However, we managed to identify a very good planter that stood out as one of the few viable choices. This particular planter met our criteria in multiple ways. We provided ample space to accommodate the minimum size requirements of the farm bot, appeared sturdy and durable, and featured flat sides and a level top surface devoid of any decorations. These design characteristics ensured an ideal surface for the farm bot to sit upon. In addition to selecting the planter, we also recognize the need to plan ahead for the procurement of soil and seeds. Now I would like to pass the baton to Susan and Navika, who will share their valuable insights and experience with you in upcoming few slides. They are the heroines of this project, and I'm excited for you to hear from them firsthand. Thank you. Can you hear me? Yes. Okay. All right, so no one at Space Cookies had had any experience with the farm bot before this project, so we were all really learning by doing. And on top of that, we had the challenge of trying to execute the farm bot during COVID. So before expanding on that particular topic, let me mention something about that planter base that Dan just showed you. For the Space Cookies, the team builds its robots from metal and hard plastics, so building the wooden planter was a fun new experience for the girls. We just rarely do anything with wood. And the long sides of the planter needed to be pairwise level. They had to be completely level, and they had to be level with each other. And the reason for that is because the overhead mechanism on the farm bot is completely rigid, and it runs up and down the length of the planter. If the two sides of the planter weren't perfectly level with each other, then you would get twisting and warping and the mechanism would break. So we spent almost an entire session making sure that the planter was properly constructed. So the construction of the planter was relatively easy, but then we had multiple levels out there and we were just trying to test all directions to make sure that the planter was going to not warp on us. And so far it's done a pretty good job. So it was a very sturdy planter that we picked. So next slide. Great. So before we even started this project, we had to plan for everyone's safety. As Dan mentioned, we worked on this project in the spring of 2021. So COVID had been going for a while, and we wanted to get this started and not wait because we didn't know how long the pandemic would last. But at the same time we wanted to make sure that everyone was safe. So we did a couple of things. One, we built this entire farm bot outside. So luckily California has nice warm weather. And the area that the community center gave us had an overhang. So we could build it in the shade. And it didn't rain. So we did build this thing outside. Dan had all the materials in her office, and she would bring them out on a cart every single time. And we would, she and I would coordinate in advance. So how many pages of the manual we were going to try to accomplish each session. And she would try to guess which pieces we needed, but usually everything just came down. And then we would sort things at the beginning of the session. We limited the work groups to four girls on site and two mentors and Dan. And we had extensive COVID screening to make sure that everyone was well and wasn't having any symptoms. And back then we were all wearing masks outside. We made the decision to actually purchase extra sets of tools. So the farm bot came with a set of tools that were all you needed in order to build the farm bot but they only sent one set. So we purchased three more sets so that the girls would each have their own set of sanitized at the beginning. And then we wouldn't have to share any tools. Also the mentors brought their own power tools with them. So that we didn't have to share those either. We worked on Sundays, which is when the community center and the library are both closed. So there was no one else around. And that was good because there are thousands of small pieces that Navica will tell you about. And this way we weren't disturbed. And also we could sort of maintain a little bit of a bubble. And in addition to this, the space cookies have standard operating procedures for doing any kind of work like this. So we followed all of those which included wearing safety glasses at all times, having our hair tied back, wearing shoes that covered our feet. So even though it was warm, everyone came in closed toed shoes and long pants. And that way if we dropped anything we wouldn't hurt ourselves. All our standard robot things. So Navica will now talk about the assembly experience. Next slide. Yeah, okay, so a huge challenge for us. As Susan mentioned, it was just like the complexity of the farm bot system. It was pretty hard to organize and coordinate because there was just so many different parts. On the left photo, you can see Dan's work cube, which is full with boxes of parts of all sizes. These include things like aluminum extrusions, buyers, sensors, chips, as well as a wide array of nuts and bolts. As Susan said before, each of our sessions involve four girls and be prepared beforehand by reading the specified pages of the manual, usually around 20 pages. And on our side, Dan organized, opened and set up all of the parts needed. And even though across the various meeting different girls were present, mentors like Susan and Dan helped us maintain continuity. Careful attention to detail throughout the whole process helped us run smoothly and created a solid foundation for the farm bot strong functionality and movement capabilities. In the photo on the right, you can see the central processing unit of the farm bot with the Raspberry Pi and the Farm Dreamer chip. This is also where all of the cables connect in a complex network, and this enables the farm bot to move in three axes. So up and down, left and right and back and forth. Next slide please. I'm just going to jump in quickly while that you saw on that slide it had some links to list and of items and documents. I'm just want to let everyone know afterwards when the archive recording is ready as available, you will have this side deck as well. Dan already sent it to me. And so that will be available to you so these links to things and there's other resources and whatnot on the, on the slides. If you worry about that you will have access to that everyone have access to the afterwards with the recording. Go ahead. As Susan mentioned, this was a really long process of trial and error, but we gained invaluable knowledge throughout this. As the farm bot assembly consisted of well over 100 pages of instructions. We did run into a few technical issues just because of how intricate was, and I'm going to briefly cover some of them. I'm going to recall one of the first times. So the wooden body of the planter has two long sliders along the edge and it's on top of this at the farm bot roles. And the plates that attach it have wheels that are connected with eccentric spacers in them. So these are spacers that vary in thickness along the length of the spacer. This was something we had never looked at before. We didn't realize that this could like be a thing. And we didn't pay attention to the orientation of the spacers when assembling it the first time around. But after realizing the issue and a lot more experimentation with real location and space orientation, we were able to get this lighting functioning smoothly the third time. Another setback was on magnet polarity. The various gardening tools on the farm bot, such as the tools to plant seeds or pull out weeds are attached by three magnets, and they weren't like obviously marked in polarity. So when we assembled it, we didn't really pay attention to it. And it didn't look that different, even when the polarities were flipped. So it wasn't until later that we realized that we had to redo them. And that actually needed pretty precise angles on the magnet, which we didn't realize earlier. Another temporary setback was from an impromptu decision made early on. This one was pretty nerve wracking because we had built the bot in the middle of the trunk to optimize the space that it could cover, because we thought that way it'd be able to access more of the planter. But what happened is after we admired the cables, we realized that the tools need to be placed on one side of the planter. And this means that the farm bot also needs to start from one side of the planter and go from there. However, after a lot of thinking, we were able to easily fix this by half unscrewing the base and just switching the entire assembly over. Overall, we learned a lot and became a lot more resilient and adaptable through overcoming these issues. Next slide please. So on the assembly side of things, in less than three months, we successfully completed the assembly phase and proceeded to set up the software environment for the farm bot. In the picture on the left, you can see just how many steps and sub steps this process included. So this is getting kind of redundant, but we did run into a few more setbacks, which we had to identify and overcome. One of our first experiences with this was when the Gantrude farm bot will like come down towards the planter and then it wouldn't go back up. So we contacted tech support after suspecting that the motor either lacked power or didn't work properly, but they recommended the mechanical fix of a flying graphite lubricant. However, when we tried this, this didn't help with our issue. Eventually, we contacted them again and after an hour long zoom call with the tech support, we confirmed that the motor was faulty. We eventually confirmed it by switching it with another motor and after the other motor was placed in, it went up just fine. So that's how we knew that the motor was the issue. This was simply bad luck as having a malfunctioning motor is very rare and we were sent to free replacement, but it did delay the assembly process a little bit. Another issue on our end that was a quick fix after finding the problem was the air suction in the needle to suck up the seeds. Due to a misstep, the vacuum was blowing air out instead of sucking it in. Okay, well, I've mentioned mostly hardware problems so far. We also ran into a few software issues. For instance, we discovered that the farm bot was unable to detect the attached tools despite proper installation, but this was fixed through extensive testing by Dan. It's also worth mentioning that the software tuning for the farm bot differs a lot from that of readily made robots. With the farm bot, the software must be carefully calibrated to align with our specific configuration of the farm bot, meaning that we have to be very precise with our physical measurements and software adjustment. However, we were able to overcome all these hurdles for determination and perseverance. And I'll pass it back to you Dan. Okay, thank you so much, Navika. So I'll continue talking about the programs we launched with farm bot. We proudly showcase the farm bot at various events, including the Rick maker fair and health fair, where it garnered significant attention and admiration. Additionally, we introduced a dedicated farm bot program to engage the community. The Space Cookies Girls played a vital role in sharing our farm bot journey with our customers, leaving them amazed and inspired by our project. Their enthusiasm and passion in conveying the story of the farm bot project added an extra level of excitement and engagement to these events. Now, despite our best efforts, farm bot encounters occasional hiccups during demos, just like any other technology. Similar to experiencing laptop malfunctions or app glitches on our phones, farm bot can sometimes act up too. While the watering function has proven to be quite reliable, we did encounter an unexpected incident during a test run when the water pipe unexpectedly popped. Fortunately, there were no customers present at that moment. We quickly improvised a solution by using cable ties to secure the water pipe in place, ensuring that such an incident wouldn't occur again. And we also run into many other glitches during demonstrations. Story of my life. So because the project started during the pandemic, we also curated a dedicated YouTube playlist to make our project visible and accessible to more audiences. This playlist features videos that showcase the process of building the farm bot, as well as demonstrations of how the farm bot operates. By creating this playlist, we aim to offer a resource for anyone interested in learning more about the development and functionality of the farm bot. I'm going to play this four minute long video. This video showcased how the space cookies helped building the farm bot, and we will have the chance to meet more space cookies girls who helped with the project in this video. While I don't stay live early, we recently built a cultural robot farm bot. This is the first time they have reviewed a robot from scratch, and the project showcased our community's talent, creativity and spirit. Hi, we are the Space Cookies, FRC Robotics Team 1868 and Girls Cart Group 6286. Our team has 62 girls from 22 different high schools. We participate in many different STEM based outreach events every year, and are excited to help the library with our new farm bot outreach project. Building the farm bot has been very fun, and we thank the library for giving us the opportunity to bring a new robot to Palo Alto. Hi, my name is Anjuli and I work mostly on the moving components and the wheels of the farm bot. And one challenge we faced was that the wheels here were not moving as swiftly as they could on the farm bot, and they were getting stuck in the treads. So how we fixed that is we used a type of washer called an eccentric spacer. And this is a type of washer that is different lengths at each angle of the spacer, and it let us adjust the length so it can move swiftly along the track instead of getting stuck. So the eccentric spacer works by having different widths and different thicknesses on each side of the spacer, and that lets the wheels sit higher up or lower down, based on how we adjust it, which lets us move the wheels along the track more smoothly. Hi, I'm Catherine and I worked mainly on the belts and some of the wiring on the farm bot. I'll introduce a bit about some of the cabling. Over here, we have cabling for the power supply and also the water supply. Up here, this cable carrier carries the most cables because it carries some of the cables for tools as well as for the motors. And over here, we have the cables for the tools. When we were working with these cable carriers, there are little tabs inside and you had to take each one of the tabs out and then lay all the cabling in and then put each of the tabs back in to make sure that everything stayed organized. Hi, my name is Paige and I mostly worked on the planter box for this farm bot project. One problem we faced during this project was keeping the wires inside the electrical box organized. And one way we overcame this challenge was to use foam spacers inside the box that would keep the wires evenly spaced and neatly organized. It's been a while for us, but every time I watch the video, it reminds me of, you know, how much work we put into this. And it's, I like the last screen and also give a shout out to our, to the other mentors, space cookies, Michael here. Oh, sorry, sorry to get me used this. Okay. So, aside from the video we just watched, I also highly recommend this video in our playlist. This is a very short but incredible time lapse video showcases the entire journey of a carrot's growth from seed to harvesting over a span of six months. The farm bot diligently captured 160 photos, which have been compiled into this visually stunning video. I'm going to play it. It's only 20 seconds long. Definitely. I definitely want to do that one. But when I watch the video, I would like you to pay special attention to the farm left side of the video, because it showcases you will witness the mesmerizing dance of a carrot as it sprouts flourish and matures in the soil. And this unique perspective reviews the fascinating dynamics of vegetable girls that may have previously gone unnoticed, at least to me. I never know carrots dance when a girl. Let's watch it. So how did it taste. I actually didn't test taste it. She carefully sliced, you know, this very first carrot and shared with many other librarians. They say the test was amazing. And also allowed our customers to take home a few of the carrots they harvest from the planting bed. Yeah. Should Amanda library chicken soup. Great idea. Yeah, if we ever have another batch of carrots, we should do that. All right, I think next I'm going to actually provide you a very quick demonstration of the farm bot software interface. So I will quit my slides. And let's go to be. Okay. So here on this screen. This is a farm bot software interface and it's accessible via the designer URL. You just need to create a login with your own farm bot. And on this page, what do you see here is, it's a representation of the bot. It's currently located at the lower left corner, and also the planting bed, because we are building the smallest size of the farm bot. So it's just, you know, just one corner of the page. And on the top here. These are the tools. And if I go to the tools page. And you can see this is the cedar. This is seed being the seed tray, you will put the seeds in the seed being the seed tray, and you use the cedar to suction up the seed. And here's a watering nozzle. This is soil sensor. And this is the leader. So this interface allows us to, you know, create custom programs. And we can use this custom programs to ask a farm bot to perform specific tasks automatically. So if we move on to the event page. As you can see, I scheduled. I have a weekly schedule. Mondays to some Monday through Sunday. And I just scheduled on May 27. And I asked the bot to, you know, watering all the plants every morning, and then take capture some photos. And I scheduled it pretty far ahead, I think, because by this time farm bot is, we kind of already worked out most of issues in the bot so it's probably it's just, you know, doing it's automatic things on a daily basis. So let's go to here. I just want to showcase so these are the photos the farm bot takes. And if if I want to I can just, you know, ask you to take a photo right now, where it's resting. And it'll just take the photos and the request and showing up right here. All right. Let me go back to my slides. And I'm going to pass on back to Susan Navica again. Thank you. Okay. So what we learned. So as a robotics team, usually we design our robots for our annual competition. So this was a really unique opportunity for us to witness the design and manufacturing process of commercial robots, and also learn a lot of valuable engineering tricks. One of the ones actually turned out to be directly applicable to a robot, as you saw with the chains that are used to collect the wires in the back and on the top. Those are I guess chains and those are the same ones that we use on our robot this year. However, a lot of the things aren't directly applicable to our robot, but definitely skills that we could use in the future. Some cool things that we learned about were indented notches. And these were just like on plates that were hard to align. So instead of having to worry about which holes go where you can just line up the notch and which is that's like a lot simpler. And also eccentric spacers, which I talked about earlier and also in the video, which allow you to make very slight adjustments to have more precise controls over things. Because we're a small girl team, the same people that design the robot build a robot. So we don't have to worry about following any instructions as we know where everything goes and they can like picture the entire assembly in our heads. But on this farm bot project, we had to follow extremely detailed instructions, which was a new experience for us. And this taught us a lot about thinking about manufacturing process and thinking about how you're going to build it while you're designing. And overall, this project has been an incredible learning experience for everyone involved. It not only provided us with an opportunity to expand our knowledge and skills, but it also showcase the benefits of collaboration and application of engineering principles in the real world projects. Thank you, Navika. And I'm going to talk about the lessons the library learn. So we successfully created a platform for community talent to shine and achieved our goal of promoting digital literacy with our community. Now if your library is considering embarking on a similar project. There are several key elements, you will need to ensure its success. First and foremost, assembling the right team is crucial. This includes garnering support from leadership team who can provide guidance and resources throughout the project. Additionally, having skilled staff members who possess the necessary expertise in robotics and technology will greatly contribute to the project execution. Engaging with the talent present in your community, such as local robotics enthusiasts or experts can further enhance the project success. Collaboration is paramount working closely with other departments within your organization will ensure a comprehensive and well rounded approach. Collaboration also extends beyond the library or your organization involving communication and coordination with vendors or suppliers and engaging the community in various capacities. Patience is a virtue, especially when undertaking a pioneering project like this. It's important to remember that on forcing challenge and uncertainties are bound to arise along the way embracing patients allows you to navigate these hurdles with a steady approach, learning from setbacks and adapting your strategies as needed. In addition to patients, be a daredevil. As libraries, we have a unique role in promoting lifelong learning and fostering growth within our communities. By involving our innovative projects like the FarmBot initiative, we open new doors and provide exciting opportunities for our community members to explore and expand their horizon. Okay, thank you for your attention. We have now reached the final slide of our presentation. Please feel free to scan the QR codes on the screen to access my contact information and space cookies website. Chris, I think we're open for questions. Yes, absolutely. Yeah, right. Yeah, go ahead and keep that slide up for now. And we'll see what people have questions about and if they want to look at anything else. Yes, if anyone doesn't have any questions, go ahead and type into the questions section of your go-to webinar interface. I'm monitoring that here. And we will ask our presenters anything you're interested in. This was, I'm very excited about this session, like I said, this is very fun. Seeing how it works. I love robots and robotics. I'm not good at them. I've never really tried much with them. So I'm very impressed, Navica, with everything you and your teammates have done on this, things that I could never have even thought of, but it's just so fun to watch it and see it work. And in the chat, I also, I found the origin story of the FarmBot and there was an updated version of it that just came out in August of 2022. And I found like a reference to a curriculum. And I was wondering, did that curriculum exist yet when you started this project? Let me open that. I'll put a link to the curriculum I found too. It looked like it's super new, so it might have actually just come out since that article came out too. Yeah, oh, oops. That's the page. Yep. Yeah. Okay. And I'll put, here's the link to, would you mind opening up that curriculum and let me know if it is for the same, the logo matched, but I want to make sure it's for the same product. It is for the same product and they do have, already have a documentation the time we run the project. However, if you go into the detailed levels of assembling the FarmBot, especially in our case, we are assembling the minimum size of the FarmBot. So there are certain steps in the documentation. It's just for the regular size. Yeah, we have to customize the documentation and customize it a lot in our needs. And also we are building it on this veggie chuck planter, because there are two ways of using the FarmBot. You can originally, in our grant, as I mentioned, we were trying to use the outdoor yard in one of our branches. We are going to use that yard. Our plan was to use the bot directly on the ground. So just have, you know, you know, four pieces of wood on the ground setup, a very simple planter. But because we have to move it to the community center's corner, and it's a paved, already paved space. So we have to shift the direction and try to find the veggie, you know, identify the planter that will work, elevator planter that will work with the FarmBot. So that's another challenge. You know, we have to customize, you know, the steps, because we have these specific needs. That was a question that someone had, you're just talking about the different sizes and doing it on the ground or above. How big can this FarmBot be? How much, you know, how big of a... Like, what are the applications for going big, I guess? How much, you know, yeah. Well, I mentioned in one of the slides, let me see if I... I think it's on... Identify the model. So they do offer these... The one we have is a FarmBot Genesis. And the smallest size, the minimum size we can build, which is what we built is... I remember it's the width is 0.5 meter and the length is 1.5 meter. Now, if you build a full-size Genesis, it's... I think it's like four times. So it's like 1 meter width and 3 meter in length. So a good size bed, yeah, for someone doing... It doesn't seem great, you know. You can harvest more vegetables if you're building in full-size. Because we have to put it on, you know, this paved ground. We have to use elevated planter and elevated planter. The time I researched, I think, and also we're thinking the cost, because we didn't put the planter cost, elevated planter cost, at least, in the grand proposal. So we have to, you know, squeeze some budget out of the project to purchase this, I think, 200 or 300 elevated planter. And the Genesis itself, at that time, it was around 3,000 bucks. And your planter is on wheels, too, so you can move it wherever you want to use it. No, we are not. It's not on wheels, because Susan mentioned that the bot requires, you know, the sites leveled perfectly. If you install wheels, it will add, you know, extra, like, difficulties. No, no, no, yeah. We don't want to do that. You want to say something else, Amanda? I just saw the farm bot was on sale. Oh. Yeah. I mean, to get one. I want to put it on sale for now. Oh, should I put the link to this product page? Yeah, sure, we can share that. Yeah. We do have questions. So, yeah, anybody have any questions? Get them into the questions section. We're almost at 11 o'clock, but that's okay. 11 o'clock central time, but that's okay. We'll go as long as it takes for all of you to get your questions asked in the audience and for all of our presenters to say everything they want to about it. Someone who does want to know that today, farm by is very attractive. Is there a recommended age for assembly? Like, what would you consider the minimum age for someone to be able to do something like this? Or the ages of the girls who did do it. So students. Yes, this is a high school girls. And I don't think I would recommend doing this with a group that's younger. Some of the sections are relatively straightforward. And other pieces really took. You just really had to focus in. As Navica mentioned, when we first tried to put the sliders together, it took them three tries. And it involved a lot of lock nuts, which had to be unlocked. And I just don't think that you could do this with a group that's younger. Yeah, I agree. And one question I did have was about the maintenance of it. Like, I love hearing how it was all built and put together. Like, that was amazing. And then I wondered, once it's all together, how often do you have to update like the software firmware and do like maintenance mode on it? That's a very good question. I do recall some emergency moments. I need to, you know, just go where the farm bot is and do a careful collaboration again. Because especially, you know, this bot, it's sitting outside, you know, 24 seven and the sunshine, the rain and. And inevitably, some parts will move. And I would say the most difficult part that need more careful collaboration was the tools. So for the farm bot to, like, here you see on this screen, the long, the Z axis, the, you know, the long stick in the middle, that's the bot, the moving part. And they'll use magnets to attract the tools on the tool bay, sorry, excuse me. The tool bay in the far end. And you have to tell the bot exactly where, how to lower down itself to get to the point of the tools, and it cannot have over like five millimeters of difference if anything happened, you know, then you have to collect everything. And I do recall recently, I think I used some checks. But recently, it's been more stable, but at the beginning when we first, you know, when we first assembled everything and tuning with with software I remember every week I had to come in and recalibrate it to give it a new number like, is it five or, you know, down to three millimeters now. Yeah, it's a it's a very tedious troubleshooting process. And like, and what's the lifespan of the motors because I know most CNC machines that's usually what goes first. You had to change them out much. Motors, except, you know, during the assembling process Susan, we discovered the malfunctioning motor and they sending the new one. Otherwise, it's been functioning the motors has no problem at all. For all these years it's been functioning still. I think it's still pretty in good in pretty good shape. Lucky. Yes, or yeah, or you can say what lucky. We had to see like CNC machine that had to get the motor changed out like almost every year. They're just like bad parts are just like bad. And interesting you mentioned that it's not the farm bot, but our now robot does run into motor issues it has two legs, if you, I don't know if you ever call. And it'll do dances, but then, you know, the legs the motors on the lake just couldn't sustain for a very long time. Yeah. These hardware, you know, we got the robot and you know the hardware part. It's, it's, it will never last forever. And I most recently actually, you know, farm bot was our last years like we concluded last year so most recently I was working on another grant project we call the light up your library, and it's a Jones program. And we were using those DJI Robo master Jones. And in the crime grand proposal, I specifically mentioned, you know, for the Jones it's the same case, it went last forever. But with, you know, people with knowledge of the Jones we taking good care of it we know what we're doing what we're scripting for the Jones to perform. Maybe we can make them last for one to two years. Because the DJI tello drone set right now. And it's always the propellers that go first. Yeah, the propellers they need to the four propellers, they need to be once they dropped, you have to put them in the, put them back in in a very specific way, because they have directions. If you have them in the wrong way they won't work anymore. Those are the details. They also maybe the most delicate part of the drone to. Yeah, if they, for example, they don't hit the wall and it fall down, then one of the propeller will just fly out for sure. And what to reassembling it back. I'm so familiar with the grant we have, you know, multiple Robo master Jones it's very similar to the tello Jones. They are all both manufactured by DJI. Last year we also, because we are collaborating with the Seattle State University I school, so they provided us a free tello drone last year we launched a program with it. This year we were doing it with the Robo master Jones. This Robo master Jones you can do program a light show with them. And they will also flip forward for the backward doing group dances. The program was amazing but yeah it's just a hardware. It's very tricky. Yeah. All right, so this project that you're doing here of the farm but is this you said you had a grant to get this going. Is this now an ongoing project program. Is there an end me I see you have those still those other robots you're still doing things with is this going to be, you know, what's the plan forward with this. That's a very, very good question crystal, and I don't have a very good answer for that unfortunately. So, yeah, like I mentioned, the robotics programs we have at library. I think all of them so far we've run it's all sponsored by grants and grant has their grant period. Most of them it's like one year after one year. It walks into that gray area. So, especially for Palo Alto city library, we are a small municipal library, and we don't have that many staff. You know, we only have 50 less than 60 staff. And I'm the one that leading the robotics projects in our library. We just don't have that much manpower to maintain all these different robotics projects we started. Like I mentioned, the now robots do your robots, the farm bot, the Jones. So it's, it's being, it becomes more and more of a challenge for our first to think about the future of this robot and to think about their sustainability, but fortunately, like I mentioned that I school so they reached out, they reached out to us for a partnership and and Dr and Tony child at the high school. I think he's very visionary. His idea is to have a library technology integration lab. So where the I school will actually purchase and own all these different hardware pieces, and they will collaborate with different libraries in the California state, and, or even beyond nationwide. We will together we will, you know, collaborate and develop documentations and the program documentations included and provided free to all the library partners. I think that is a great idea. And I've been working with Dr child closely since last year. We've also presented idea at last year's a la I believe Dr child is going to present this idea again. And to this year's a conference, and we've already kind of established a few projects for example the now robots I've worked on we shared all the documentations that get hungry repositories. Also the Jones, we share the GitHub repository and I school is building a webpage to assembling all this information, and they are working on, you know, purchasing all these hardwares. So I'm hoping in the future for, you know, technology projects, we could find a more sustainable way. Because I, you know, I've been doing this for this is also my 60 year at Colorado city library. The more I work on technology projects the more I feel there's need. You know, we need to focus on the sustainability side. So, so much for asking this question. I got a little giddy when you said that because I've been working on like a similar project. We've been calling it the tech hub, which is basically like a collection of guides and like a resource repository to help libraries get started with it learn how to use it and do programming. So I wonder if we put our both of our stuff together. Oh yeah. We should do that. Definitely. You guys need to talk more deaf. Absolutely. Yeah, partnerships. That's the key to something. As you said, as you described in libraries are short on staff short on budgets and finding anyone in the community any partners are definitely the way to get these kind of things going and survive and and keep them going and I hope that that does keep happening absolutely. Yeah, as we've been building a separate portal but instead of going and building that whole thing. If you already have something then we could just funnel it over there. Yeah. Yeah, yeah. Awesome. I'm glad I got you guys talking. You're both talking. I got one last question want to ask and I think we'll wrap things up and this is about the space cookies actually that that you have the robotics team there. Is this something that's just in California at in your particular group or can other Girl Scout groups start up one of these how would a Girl Scout group get one of these space cookies robotics team things going for themselves. I'll take that one. We are a specialty Girl Scout troop. So, Girl Scouts of Northern California was reached out from NASA back in 2006 when they wanted to start a robotics team for girls. NASA is a big supporter of something called first, which is for inspiration. Oh God, I've forgotten the entire. So it's. I don't know what the FIRS two stands for. For inspiration. I forgot what the R is science and technology. Anyway, this is an Oregon international organization started by Dean Cayman, who is the segue guy. And it's to spread stem excitement in kids to encourage more people to go into STEM. And NASA is a big supporter of this program. They've been a supporter from the beginning, and they sponsor robotics teams all over the country. And they had started a team in collaboration with a boy school out here in the Bay Area, and they wanted to start a girls team. And so they had reached out to Girl Scouts and Girl Scouts of Northern California had said, absolutely, we can start a specialty team, especially troop that is going to work under under this organization. We are not only a girl scout troop, but we are also a first robotics competition team. First robotics competition teams exist all over the world. I believe that there are teams in all 50 states in the US. Most of them are high school teams. I am sure that there are teams in Nebraska. So that that is the organization that we are that we compete under. So some other group wanted to do that that's what they should reach out to find out who is their first robotics team in their area and then they could. Right, right. Yes, so there are plenty of first robotics teams all over every state in the in the US. Nice. It goes through UNL's extension office, and they have a repository of like all of them. And apparently it stands for for inspiration and recognition and science and technology which I was never going to remember. I would not have thought recognition. Yeah. But it makes sense. Cool. Great. Um, does anybody have any last minute desperate questions they would like to ask our speakers thank you everyone for sticking around. Everyone is stuck around while we've been chatting here. If you have anything last you want to ask get it into the question section. And while we're waiting to see if anything comes in I'll start my, I'm going to bring presenter control back to my screen here. But talk about what we're going to be putting up for our recording. Alright, we got some thank yous coming in thank you presenters is very fun. So these are some of the links that Amanda was sharing that she had found as you said the the webpage for the farm bot to order it, and that it is yep on sale both of them they're on sale so you could get either the smaller or the XL. If you wanted to add discount prices and they've got the farm bot expresses are these on sale too. Yeah, everything's on sale. Yeah. Yeah, so when I do, I'm going to put up the archive for this I will put links to all these things that we have here. There's the order it's the educational resources. And this is the page that the about the how it started. As well as link to Dan slides so you'll have links to everything here when the archive is up. We say it's up man Amanda that I missed. Just that I was geeking out with that article. And you can see here that I like this comparison of the two different sizes at that time that you can see how they compare to each other. They also talk a lot about proprietary technology and how that's like more harmful for farmers because they can't build their own equipment. Yeah, like a lot of the challenges that farmers face. So it's a cool article I should read it. Oh yeah for agriculture open source we love open source. Yes, absolutely. All right, so I don't see any other desperate questions coming in so we will wrap things up yeah thank you everybody for being here thank you to all of our presenters today. I said we are recording the show and if you just use your search engine of choice and I'm just going to go up here and type in and compass live. The only thing called that on the internet so far. You will find our encompass live main webpage and our archive page. These are upcoming shows. Everyone's welcome to sign up for those. This is where our archives go there's a link underneath our list of upcoming shows, most recent ones at the top of the page. 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So, shirm is going to be joining us on those two. Pretty sweet text, and you can see all of our other shows coming up. We are fully dollars goes up here for the summer. I'll start working on August a little later. So please register for any of our shows like I said free and open to anyone. And next week we are going to be having you mentioned UNL staff from our University of Nebraska libraries. We have a search of the obscure using library and online sources to find resources that are out of the ordinary. So we have staff people from UNL right here in Lincoln that are going to be talking about interesting things you can find in your searches so please do sign up for that, or any of our other shows. Thank you everybody for being here. And hopefully we'll see you at a future episode of encompass live. And then I'm going to email.