How the farm was built

Eight phases, one apartment, six tomato plants. The chronological version, with photos.

The Frame

First screw. Aluminium profiles, the physical skeleton everything else will hang on. Feels like furniture-building — without a plan. But in the end, it stands. (Like Cadia. It stands too. And the Emperor protects this farm.)

Six Pots

Six is the hobby number: enough to play with, not too much for an apartment. 3D-printed lampshades, LED rings, first sensors. The farm turns green before anything actually grows.

Power & Wiring

5V, 5.5V, 12V — each voltage gets its own domain. A hundred meters of cable through the living room, fuses for everything that could go bang. Electricity isn't magic. But when it's running under your couch, it starts to feel like it.

Water

Pumps, tanks, hoses, nozzles. The job: build a water cycle where every pod gets the right amount at the right time — and nothing arrives where it shouldn't.

The Z-Axis

A camera that travels. Sounds simple. Wasn't. Linear rail, stepper motor, endstops, three or four trips back to the 3D printer. The first clean top-to-bottom run is worth standing still for.

Air & Ventilation

Stagnant air rots tomatoes. Custom 3D-printed fan panels with servo-driven louvers steer the climate — push when humidity climbs, pull when CO₂ builds up. Two banks of fans, four panels — and a climate that regulates itself.

Brains

Code doesn't build the farm — but it keeps her alive. MQTT, .NET backend, AI Council. Multiple LLMs plus a human, looking after six tomato plants together. Science fiction shows up looking unspectacular: a Pi, some Arduinos, a wiring loom, six little ESP32 eyes, and a conversation.

Coding & Deployment

Beyond the hardware: a .NET API talking to the farm, a Blazor dashboard watching her think, a Supabase mirror sharing what's safe to share, and this public site telling her story. The part that lets the farm reach beyond the apartment walls.