[HN Gopher] Linux Foundation starts AgStack, an open-source agte...
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Linux Foundation starts AgStack, an open-source agtech initiative
 
Author : teleforce
Score  : 224 points
Date   : 2021-05-08 12:52 UTC (10 hours ago)
 
web link (investableuniverse.com)
w3m dump (investableuniverse.com)
 
| pm90 wrote:
| I'm concerned about the Linux Foundation being involved in all
| these projects. I expected it to be an organization dedicated to
| Linux. But it seems to have expanded to a myriad of different
| spaces and it's endorsement is often used to legitimize really
| bad products, ideas and initiatives (look at the finops
| nonsense).
| 
| Can't they just be stewards of Linux kernel development and focus
| on that? If there are other initiatives just create other
| foundations or redirect funding to those areas.
 
  | ghaff wrote:
  | >Can't they just be stewards of Linux kernel development and
  | focus on that? If there are other initiatives just create other
  | foundations
  | 
  | The way a lot of these other initiatives are organized is they
  | _are_ their own foundations /projects under the LF umbrella
  | which lets them share infrastructure, piggtback on events, etc.
  | 
  | Meanwhile Linux seems to be doing quite well from where I sit.
  | I'm not sure what activities are lacking around Linux that a
  | more focused (and inevitably much leaner) organization would
  | drive.
 
| RGamma wrote:
| The planet won't benefit from this.
| 
| Agricultural overconsumption with a more efficient or open
| technology supply chain is still overconsumption.
 
  | danuker wrote:
  | How do you know it's overconsumption?
 
    | RGamma wrote:
    | Half the habitable land is farm land and farm land is
    | ecologically dead (with pesticide use having damaging effects
    | on the surroundings) and not available for carbon
    | sequestration for instance.
    | 
    | Also "livestock accounts for 77% of global farming land.
    | While livestock takes up most of the world's agricultural
    | land it only produces 18% of the world's calories and 37% of
    | total protein"
    | 
    | And the trend is growth..
    | 
    | https://ourworldindata.org/land-use
 
      | newsclues wrote:
      | Is it impossible to use technology to make use of small
      | plots of land to function as regenerative organic farms to
      | sustainablely feed people?
 
      | ahepp wrote:
      | Won't improving ag tech improve the efficiency of farming
      | land? And allow better ecological management?
 
        | tome wrote:
        | Beware Jevons paradox.
        | 
        | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jevons_paradox
 
        | RGamma wrote:
        | Even 100% efficient agriculture is meaningless in the
        | face of overburdening absolute demand.
        | 
        | Raising efficiency and means of exploitation may also
        | induce demand ("oh we're so eco-friendly").
        | 
        | The point is: Life needs (contiguous) undisturbed
        | wilderness.
        | 
        | And ecological management? That this would even be
        | necessary is testament to our fuckup, but yeah that might
        | actually be topic's biggest benefit I suppose.
        | 
        | Pre-industrialisation life managed itself just fine for
        | millenia.
 
        | wolverine876 wrote:
        | > Pre-industrialisation life managed itself just fine for
        | millenia.
        | 
        | What do you mean by that, specifically? Clearly we
        | benefit enormously from what has happened since,
        | including food, shelter, peace, freedom, knowledge, etc.
        | etc. I just got something called a vaccine, which
        | protects me from a deadly disease. Someone stuck a needle
        | in my arm, but they had figured out how to do that
        | perfectly safely. The vaccine was driven to the provider,
        | kept cold in refrigeration, and I also drove the provider
        | after making prior arrangements via telecommunications.
        | You're literate and reading this on a website using a
        | computer, a vast collection of manufactured items ... You
        | get the idea.
 
        | RGamma wrote:
        | I meant natural life. You know, animals/plants... Those
        | things that inhabited this planet for millions of years
        | before us.
        | 
        | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Life
        | 
        | Christ, how far have things come
 
        | wolverine876 wrote:
        | I understand your point now. I didn't realize that your
        | last sentence referred to human-managed 'wilderness'.
        | 
        | Anyway, what is your solution? Starvation doesn't seem
        | like an option.
 
        | RGamma wrote:
        | Why starvation? Is there nothing between being adequately
        | fed and starvation?
 
  | marcinzm wrote:
  | So? The question isn't if it's better than some utopian ideal
  | situation but if it's better than what we have now. If your
  | approach to things is the former then every solution to every
  | problem will fall short and nothing will ever change.
 
    | RGamma wrote:
    | In general I agree with "incremental progress is better than
    | none".
    | 
    | However this problem is not of a technological nature but a
    | political/institutional one.
    | 
    | If there had been a strong forward-looking consensus to keep
    | agricultural ecosystem use in check, it would never have come
    | to this point.
    | 
    | As so often the free market moves first, society gets to
    | clean up afterwards.
 
| bourgwaletariat wrote:
| Not unsurprising to me, I have a contrarian view to most of the
| comments here about this. This project is supported by, among
| others, https://www.farmfoundation.org/about-farm-
| foundation/board-o... which includes US Bank, McDonalds, John
| Deere... among others who tend to invite derision here.
| 
| What this does is extract even _cheaper_ labor from the masses. 9
| in 10 people used to be farmers. Now it 's 1 in 300. I find it
| hard to believe we have a problem with productivity in this
| industry.
| 
| The end game here is to further centralize the power structure
| into the corporations who already control most of the supply
| chain. Look at how they treat seed farmers around the world. They
| pay them pennies for seeds and then charge thousands of dollars
| for them on the global market.
| 
| Again... I don't see it. I see the trees, but where's the forest?
 
| williesleg wrote:
| Is that why bill gates is buying up all the Midwestern farmland?
 
| walleeee wrote:
| If this interests you, check out Phenome Force, they do weekly
| webinars featuring the open source/DIY agtech tools people are
| building: https://phenome-force.github.io/PhenomeForce/
| 
| We need more software/hardware engineers in open source ag. Be
| warned, you may need to live in a somewhat rural area, accept a
| modest paycheck, and occasionally get your hands dirty, but it's
| a lot more fun than writing code to shuffle forms or finances
| around imo
 
| waihtis wrote:
| What I've been very interested in lately is whether there's a way
| for us to enable local food production (local meaning on the
| individual/family scale) via some technological or business
| innovation. Maybe something along the lines of automated remote
| farming which would factor in the lack of local space to farm +
| time limitations.
| 
| Something that concerns me personally is the globalistic nature
| of the food supply chain and just from a risk management
| perspective it would be great to push it into a more localized
| state. But I don't think a world where everybody moves to
| homesteading is realistic, quite the opposite.
| 
| Just superficial pondering. If there's some nice initiatives /
| startups / other working on this would be keen to learn more
| about them.
 
  | kickout wrote:
  | Can't do it at the individual/family scale. Gotta go back
  | thousands of years for that model. Population is too great
  | (mostly enabled by highly scaled, highly efficient agriculture)
 
  | openthc wrote:
  | Take a look at spacebuckets ( eg:
  | https://www.reddit.com/r/SpaceBuckets/ ) works awesome for
  | cannabis -- but also: lettuce, herbs, cuke, growing aquaponic
  | pineapple in the winter in Oregon, etc. You can get a bucket
  | (or larger controlled envrironment) and control the whole thing
  | via Pi and this thing is cool too --
  | https://github.com/kizniche/Mycodo
  | 
  | e: and we're working on this :)
 
| openthc wrote:
| This is promising; but in the Ag space there are 100s of
| providers all doing it their own way. The same problem is staring
| in the cannabis/hemp space too. We've been working for 5+ years
| to herd all these cats together -- and now another one (cue XKCD
| about standards). We'll likey join this initiative but, I'm
| concerned how it will work with the 100s of others who are way
| more interested in building their own walled garden, or saying
| "here's a standard API (ours!)" w/o any outside inputs.
| 
| And @tomhoward on here brings up loads of good points -- in N
| farms we've seen N unique implementations ("bespoke") of
| monitoring, recording, measuring and pumps and processes and
| power-systems and all that.
 
| olafura wrote:
| For me Farmbot ( https://farm.bot/ ) is some of the most
| interesting thing happening in open source farming and they
| aren't apart of this initiative. None of the projects are really
| something your need a framework for.
| 
| I think what some of the projects involved are doing is laudable
| but it's not really revolutionary.
| 
| Then again I don't do farming though some of my family and
| friends of my family do.
 
  | kickout wrote:
  | I do farming. I'm intrigued by this concept, but am hesitant. I
  | don't see any value add off the bat.
 
    | olafura wrote:
    | From my understanding how you can help farming with software.
    | 
    | You have supercharging current methods which most of the
    | projects in the OpenTeam initiative are doing which seems to
    | be turning into the AgStack Foundation if I understand it
    | correctly. Think adding smart sensors might be some of what
    | they are planning with the framework and importantly all the
    | planning and managing of farms which the strangely named
    | FarmOs is doing ( I say strangely since it's not an OS ).
    | 
    | The other is doing things with hardware and software that
    | aren't mimicking or supercharging current methods but just
    | implementing a new and more efficient way of doing things.
    | Think the difference between making a perfect robot hand and
    | making thing that grips. Both do the same thing but one is
    | not trying to do the same things as the other. So here you
    | have things like Farmbot that probably need so be split into
    | separate stages of operation if it is going to scale at a
    | farm field level.
    | 
    | I feel like we are past the making a better tractor and other
    | farm machinery phase and are moving into automating
    | everything we can phase. Because the problem with our current
    | processes is that they are stressing soil and the nature too
    | much. By having diverse crops in the same field you both
    | minimize the impact of soil, groundwater problems, salting
    | and stuff like that, but also minimizing the risks in farming
    | where you rely on futures commodity markets instead of having
    | a wide balance of produce.
    | 
    | But I'm no expert and haven't put much thought into this.
    | Just want us to head in the right direction and make sure we
    | invest in the right things.
 
    | olafura wrote:
    | Nice you are thinking about similar things like "autonomous
    | weeding machines".
 
  | peteradio wrote:
  | That is gardening not farming.
 
    | olafura wrote:
    | You always have to prove things out on a small scale for it
    | to work on a large scale. When I was in my early teen we had
    | a summer program to plant vegetables. I do understand that
    | it's not the same as large scale farming having grown up
    | around farming but fundamentals are still similar.
    | 
    | Yeah having stationary structures doesn't make sense in large
    | scale farming but AUV with the tech that is in Farmbots makes
    | a whole lot of sense.
    | 
    | But I might be missing something. Also the farming I have
    | experience is just in Iceland where things don't get that
    | big. I've been around a lot of different tangential things to
    | do with farming since my father side went from farming to
    | construction. But I feel like a lot of the things are
    | similar.
    | 
    | But what I know most about is software and I am mostly
    | judging things based on that and I'm really impressed with
    | Farmbot and the choices they made.
 
| sigmaprimus wrote:
| This is great news, hopefully with enough heavy hitters backing
| this project it will succeed.
| 
| I'm not a big fan of improving pesticide application techniques
| (one of the examples given in the article) as at the end of the
| day it is still pumping poison no matter how efficient but if it
| means less chemicals leeching into our food and environment, I
| suppose it's better than doing nothing.
| 
| LifeTrac is an interesting Open Source project that might benifit
| from this foundational type of support.
| 
| When it comes to agriculture, there is already a very large grass
| roots, open community of farmers and growers. Eg. Market
| gardeners, Seed sharers, Homesteaders even Hay farmers. I believe
| this group is primed to turn into a powerful societal movement
| but does require financial support to compete against the
| corporate giants that at present literally dominate the AG
| field(s).
 
  | protomyth wrote:
  | _This is great news, hopefully with enough heavy hitters
  | backing this project it will succeed._
  | 
  | I don't see any real agriculture heavy hitters (e.g. Cargill,
  | ADM).
 
    | sigmaprimus wrote:
    | Bayer? Aka Monsanto? How about JD Tractors and the whole
    | right to repair?
    | 
    | But yeah it would be awesome if Cargil got onboard. They are
    | into everything, I used to run multi purpose cables for Flir
    | trafficon cameras that was made by a Cargil company. (FLIR
    | could be a huge supporter too for that matter)
 
  | nerdponx wrote:
  | Hopefully we get some Open Hardware too.
 
| wokwokwok wrote:
| > "Just like an operating system, we feel there will be a whole
| universe of applications that can be built and consumed using
| AgStack," Johal added. "From pest prediction and crop nutrition
| to harvest management and improved supply-chain collaboration,
| the possibilities are endless."
| 
| ...said AgStack executive director Sumer Johal according to
| venturebeat (1) in another meaningless statement that provided no
| concrete details.
| 
| Their high level architecture (2) comfortably encompasses
| everything from ML to shells to security; "like an operating
| system" the press release claimed, careful to avoid saying they
| were actually building an operating system, because that would be
| daft.
| 
| ...but who is Sumer Johal? Well, no one very interesting (3) it
| turns out, but he's been involved in agtech for some time...
| 
| So... I guess I'm left puzzled?
| 
| What does this have to do with the Linux foundation?
| 
| Well, turns out the place to go to find out is... surprise, the
| Linux foundation:
| 
| https://www.linuxfoundation.org/en/press-release/linux-found...
| 
| "Through the AgStack Project, the Linux Foundation will provide
| valuable cohesion and development capacity to support shared,
| community-maintained infrastructure."
| 
| Or something. You read it and decide for yourself; 20 different
| companies coming together to collaborate with completely
| different ideas of how and on what.
| 
| Sounds like open office.
| 
| Can't wait to see how it goes...
| 
| [1] - https://venturebeat.com/2021/05/05/linux-foundation-
| launches... [2] - https://agstack.org/projects/ [3] -
| https://www.crunchbase.com/person/sumer-johal
 
| danuker wrote:
| Ugh, I can't select text on the page. I do it to read more
| easily.
 
  | manifoldgeo wrote:
  | I came here to say this! I highlight lines as I read pages to
  | stay focused, and when highlighting is (purposely) broken like
  | this, it's really frustrating.
 
| _skhan_ wrote:
| Along the same lines, there is https://farmos.org/
| 
| It is a kind of like a CMS/ERP for agtech. I am using it for
| basic farm management purposes like inventorying equipment,
| chemicals, etc. It is built on Drupal which I personally do not
| like. Overall, the open source nature of the project allows
| anyone to contribute new modules.
| 
| I was building my own app before I found it and am glad it's one
| less project I have to 20%
 
  | wolverine876 wrote:
  | FarmOS is included in AgStack under 'members and partners'.
 
    | _skhan_ wrote:
    | Thanks I didn't notice that!
 
| dementiev wrote:
| This is very needed for the industry. I'm a co-founder of agtech
| startup https://geopard.tech, we act as a platform and
| infrastructure for ag businesses (provide analytics and APIs) in
| the precision agriculture niche. When we created the company, it
| was the idea - to support agtech companies to launch their
| software faster/cheaper (our engine analyses yield, soil,
| topography, satellite, ground sensors, drone data and provides
| analytics on top of it). Before GeoPard we had another agtech
| company acquired by ag giant Bayer in 2015, then inside Bayer, we
| built Xarvio digital farming system. So, this is very needed, I
| know what I talk about. It takes usually minimum few years to
| launch solid agtech product.
| 
| The biggest issue I see right now is where to get valid data.
| Model is nothing without a huge amount of validating datasets,
| which only have ag giants. They will not share the data so easy
| since all of them build their digital platforms and understand
| the value of data.
 
| lifeisstillgood wrote:
| Software has not eaten the world yet - not even reached the
| starters, it's just finished the bread roll.
| 
| There is a tension between closed and open source here that is
| going to occur _in every industry, in every country_.
| 
| And we shall all sit on the sidelines bemoaning the lack of
| standards ... unless ... err
| 
| I have to admit I don't know how to build dynamic detail based
| standards that don't die in committee - how do we get YAML / JSON
| and not SOAP?
| 
| I suspect it is best to start with a 100 Million dollars, and
| create open mailing lists for each industry, and invite the best
| of each industry to conferences each month.
 
| mastazi wrote:
| Unfortunately the article doesn't contain any link to the AgStack
| Foundation itself, so here it is: https://agstack.org/
 
  | teruakohatu wrote:
  | Having read that still don't know what the project really is. A
  | venue for people and corporates to discuss open agtech and a
  | source of funding for open agtech software?
 
    | mastazi wrote:
    | I think that it's just the same mechanism as the Linux
    | Foundation itself, but specific for the AgTech sector.
    | 
    | My basic understanding is that on one side you have companies
    | who want to sponsor open source tech they depend on, and on
    | the other side you have open source developement teams who
    | would like to be supported; the Foundation facilitates
    | interaction between these 2 sides.
 
    | AlphaSite wrote:
    | I think it's basically the CNCF for AgTech
 
    | windthrown wrote:
    | This was listed on the Project page:
    | 
    | "The AgStack Foundation will not engage in building software
    | applications but will instead focus on the software
    | infrastructure (tools, frameworks, and models) that will be
    | needed to build, manage and run applications by the members
    | and users"
 
| mindentropy wrote:
| Maybe someone can help me, how can an individual benefit from
| Linux Foundation? Help means work/career opportunities, business
| opportunities, consulting opportunities. I want to have first
| mover advantage in AgStack.
 
| BJBBB wrote:
| Of interest to me because I have been doing agricultural process
| monitoring and production control systems for about 30 years. And
| most of my clients' systems are at least semi-custom and re-
| invent wheels for no other purpose other than to do it their way;
| that is, silos (pun not intended). But where NDAs and IP
| agreements allow, I have attempted to standardize some
| architectures.
| 
| But was disappointing to see the way the LF is organizing this -
| no representation from the ag industry's heavy hitters and no
| specific and attainable goals.
| 
| Should this be done by an Operating Systems organization? Other
| than centralized control and logistical systems, ag engineering
| is not the realm of microprocessors and operating systems, and
| code monkeys. Ag engineering is a world of hardware, micro-
| controllers, FSMs, and scheduler stacks.
| 
| But then, if not the LF, whom has the organization to do this?
 
  | is_true wrote:
  | This should be done by the Food and Agriculture Organization
  | that belongs to the UN. But well, you can't ask much to the
  | United Bureaucrats Organization
 
  | rektide wrote:
  | LF is basically a deployable organizational model, typically
  | taken advantage of by someone with an existing project or
  | projects they want to release & collaborate on.
  | 
  | there are blockchain, mainframe, embedded os projects,
  | countless more, under LF.
  | 
  | worth noting that Linux Foundation began as a merger of between
  | Open Source Development Labs (who worked to push Linux adoption
  | in enterprise) and the Free Standards Group (who worked to push
  | open source standards) to standardize Linux. Only one of these
  | groups started with an exclusive Linux focus, and that same
  | group also focused on the enterprise & driving adoptability.
 
    | jerrysievert wrote:
    | > and that same group also focused on the enterprise &
    | driving adoptability.
    | 
    | well, sort of. there were a couple of half-assed pushes with
    | things like linux for data centers, but mostly it was a data
    | center filled with hardware that got very little use other
    | than one asterisk system sitting in a corner, a stack of
    | machines/disk that could be "checked out", but mostly got
    | used for automated testing, and an NEC numa itanium machine
    | that barely worked. add to that, projects that intel no
    | longer wanted to support being shoved off, and you have a
    | pretty good view of day to day life at the OSDL.
    | 
    | source: worked there, doing day to day life at the OSDL.
 
    | ghaff wrote:
    | OSDL was almost certainly too focused on Linux vertical
    | scalability at the time because that's what IBM and others
    | were focused on. While things like NUMA optimizations became
    | more broadly important over time (as those architectures
    | became part of smaller and smaller systems), it's of course
    | not how Linux primarily grew early on. The current LF
    | executive director actually held that position at FSG when
    | they merged.
 
  | ghaff wrote:
  | Despite the name, the Linux Foundation covers a whole lot more
  | than Linux these days, including a variety of industry vertical
  | orgs with both industry and vendor representation including
  | (off the top of my head) motion picture, finance, healthcare,
  | energy, automotive. So this is actually a pretty good fit. The
  | general idea is to start out an org like this as essentially an
  | MVP and iterate and grow over time.
 
| tomhoward wrote:
| Something like this is so sorely needed.
| 
| I've been doing some work in ag-tech for the past few years
| (having previously worked in ISP/telco, general SME web/mobile
| development, then consumer travel tech).
| 
| The tools available to farmers/growers for what should be quite
| basic things - i.e., web-connected weather stations and
| monitoring systems for soil moisture, frost alarms and irrigation
| control are terrible.
| 
| The industry is full of small players who take a look and think
| "I know how to build stuff with [Arduino/Raspberry Pi/Zigbee
| etc], I can build an ag-tech monitoring/control product easily".
| 
| So everyone builds a hardware product from scratch, then as a
| quick afterthought, a web app with an SQL database and Highcharts
| to show data graphs. You have an MVP within a few months, then a
| few paying customers in your local community, then suddenly your
| customers start asking for features you'd never thought of, like
| sensor inputs you didn't know existed, or combined displays of
| different kinds of data you'd never considered anyone would want,
| or needing it to be faster (SQL turns out to be really slow for
| this kind of data) or more reliable (bugfixing is hard when your
| devices are hundreds of miles away and connected via weak 3G/4G
| data links), and you realise your hardware and software
| architecture doesn't support any of this, and you'd have to
| completely start over to actually deliver something that
| customers really need, but you're out of money and energy.
| 
| The result is a lot of farmers/growers dissatisfied/frustrated at
| never being able to get the monitoring systems they need (some of
| them having tried 3+ different vendors), and a lot of new
| companies trying to build new solutions and going bust.
| 
| I've been thinking there needs to be some widely accepted open
| standards in the industry for hardware and software platforms, so
| solutions providers can avoid trying to re-invent everything and
| instead focus on integration of tried-and-true building blocks.
| 
| If this initiative brings that about, it would be a big win for
| everyone in the industry.
 
  | avip wrote:
  | Wow. I worked in an agtech startup and this is _exactly_ how it
  | went. Hopefully your comment stays on top for others to read.
 
  | ahepp wrote:
  | Are you aware of any promising companies or start ups in this
  | area?
 
    | dementiev wrote:
    | I'll do a bit of self-marketing, but we at GeoPard Ag
    | https://geopard.tech work on this. Have some big ag companies
    | as clients
 
  | rsj_hn wrote:
  | You know what I'd like to see is there can be other non-dev
  | support for these types of efforts. For example:
  | 
  | * technical writers
  | 
  | * security pentesting/code reviews
  | 
  | * hosting and infrastructure support services for open source
  | projects
  | 
  | Pretty sure that there are a lot of people who would be happy
  | to donate their time to opensource projects that benefit
  | farmers, so there is a bigger opportunity for matchmaking here.
 
  | dementiev wrote:
  | That's the issue indeed. The entry threshold and the amount of
  | minimum needed features for agtech products are very high.
  | Moreover, the seasonality of ag business makes the situation
  | for agtech startups even more difficult (you can usually sign
  | new test clients only in between ag seasons)
 
  | void_mint wrote:
  | The best work I've ever done was for one of the biggest
  | energy/agg companies in the world. They wanted an outside
  | contractor to build something from scratch and ignore their
  | normal corporate bureaucracy. They thought it was insane how
  | much better the system we (I) built for them was than their
  | normal in house tooling. The crazy part was the solutions were
  | mostly just normal cloud tech. Postgres, DynamoDB, some AWS
  | tools. They paid over a million dollars (nothing to them) for a
  | set of tools that weren't technically advanced at all.
  | 
  | In my experience, the problems are a result of the manufactured
  | constraints on the physical hardware/sensor devices. Mountings
  | and power and connectivity. Receiving data from an array of
  | devices into a shared storage system for analysis is a well
  | solved problem. Receiving data from multiple sensors on a fixed
  | interval, when the sensors may be made by different
  | companies/work totally differently, is where the complexity
  | lives. Combined with each company trying to build their own
  | awful closed source proprietary data system on top of their
  | sensors, you've got a really terrible time.
  | 
  | > SQL turns out to be really slow for this kind of data
  | 
  | I think this is just poor modeling. SQL is just fine for the
  | work you're talking about.
 
    | ethbr0 wrote:
    | > _Combined with each company trying to build their own awful
    | closed source proprietary data system on top of their
    | sensors, you 've got a really terrible time._
    | 
    | The more I think about right to repair, the more I become
    | convinced it's a symptom of hazy interface specifications.
    | 
    | Radical idea: Ban sensor / actuator companies from building
    | software on top of them in-house.
    | 
    | They're welcome to offer a turn-key solution to market, but
    | it must (1) have hardware and software built by two separate,
    | independent companies & (2) publish its interface specs,
    | between those two companies, to all customers or end users.
    | 
    | Things would cost more. But I'm not convinced this would be a
    | worse world, in aggregate.
 
    | abraae wrote:
    | > I think this is just poor modeling. SQL is just fine for
    | the work you're talking about.
    | 
    | I'm as big a booster of good old SQL as anyone, but there's a
    | lot to be said for more targeted time series solutions when
    | it comes to sensors.
    | 
    | I'm working on a platform for monitoring water water tank
    | levels. It slices Grafana and influxdb horizontally to share
    | the resources between multiple users and multiple tanks.
    | 
    | The productivity of such a stack is high, when it comes to
    | getting beautifully rendered, interactive graphs of e.g
    | stacked water levels. And with influxdb flux language, you
    | can write joins that join data from the time series database
    | and the rdbms (for more reference data, like the names and
    | calibration data of individual tanks).
    | 
    | Yes you can do anything with SQL but there's a reason for the
    | presence of dedicated time series databases.
 
      | void_mint wrote:
      | > I'm as big a booster of good old SQL as anyone, but
      | there's a lot to be said for more targeted time series
      | solutions when it comes to sensors.
      | 
      | https://www.timescale.com/
      | 
      | Sensors aren't really different from any other timeseries
      | data.
      | 
      | > The productivity of such a stack is high, when it comes
      | to getting beautifully rendered, interactive graphs of e.g
      | stacked water levels. And with influxdb flux language, you
      | can write joins that join data from the time series
      | database and the rdbms (for more reference data, like the
      | names and calibration data of individual tanks).
      | 
      | Your productivity being high with a given tech stack does
      | not disqualify an alternative tech stack from having
      | equally high (or much higher) productivity for equally
      | trained users.
      | 
      | > Yes you can do anything with SQL but there's a reason for
      | the presence of dedicated time series databases.
      | 
      | The reason you're describing is "marketing"
 
        | abraae wrote:
        | > Your productivity being high with a given tech stack
        | does not disqualify an alternative tech stack from having
        | equally high (or much higher) productivity for equally
        | trained users.
        | 
        | Try implementing classic timescale features like down
        | sampling in your straight RDBMS.
        | 
        | Certainly you can do it, just as you can build a house
        | with a hammer and nails rather than a nail gun.
        | 
        | But you'll spend lots of time building undifferentiated
        | infrastructure that you could have got out of the box.
 
        | void_mint wrote:
        | https://blog.timescale.com/blog/how-to-proactively-
        | manage-lo...
 
  | walleeee wrote:
  | There is a bit of progress towards open standards: e.g.,
  | MIAPPE, BrAPI. But you're right, we have a long way to go.
  | Programmers and software/hardware engineers are sorely needed
  | but ag struggles to attract them, and the startup model is not
  | very well suited for the space imo- we need to build a
  | collaborative ecosystem of open source tooling that farmers,
  | biologists, breeders, and others in ag/plant sciences can hack
  | for their particular use case
  | 
  | Check out Phenome Force, they do weekly webinars featuring the
  | open source/DIY tools people are building: https://phenome-
  | force.github.io/PhenomeForce/
 
  | bshipp wrote:
  | You appear to have had the exact same experience as I have. I
  | work in the fresh vegetable side of things and the tools that
  | are available are completely closed source and locked in. Even
  | silly things like humidity controls and whatnot. there's so
  | much potential for the ag sector to benefit from all these open
  | data sources and systems.
 
    | krapht wrote:
    | You can't make money selling hardware with open API, though.
    | It'll get cloned and manufactured in China, and people buying
    | in bulk will naturally choose the cheapest option.
    | 
    | Nobody makes money in open-source selling software, either.
    | Everything is either consulting, or SAAS.
 
  | tracyhenry wrote:
  | Can you elaborate on the kind of data and queries that SQL is
  | slow for?
 
    | openthc wrote:
    | Likely the sensor data being stuffed into a "standard" SQL
    | schema -- loads of these bespoke solutions aren't fully
    | dialed in with tools like timescaleDB, or Prometheus for
    | these metrics. Even with slower (eg 240s interval) sensors
    | the data builds up -- and slows the systems (w/o indexes).
 
    | void_mint wrote:
    | The problem that arises with a lot of these "pull data from
    | sensors, pump it into a database" is schemas and data
    | integrity have to be kind of a second-class problem behind
    | storage. When you can't push an update to whatever is
    | ingesting data, and that ingestion tool is also ingesting
    | with an invalid format, you can't just ignore the data (or
    | fix the problem). So your store has to accommodate semi
    | structured and unstructured data gracefully.
    | 
    | I do not agree that SQL is "slow" for these types of
    | problems. I've built a number of systems that support this
    | issue effectively. You _could_ use a tool that has
    | schemaless/unstructured data as a first-class feature, but if
    | your goal is to reduce complexity a Postgres instance is just
    | fine. As with all data projects, indexing is important and
    | needs to be thoughtful (from the beginning). For sensor data,
    | it's also a good idea to think about data retention and
    | removal policies immediately (keep your metrics/aggregates,
    | move raw data to cold storage after a while).
 
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