Burying the Hardware in the Community Garden

Lillyanne Pham

https://linktr.ee/lillyannepham

#♡ Favorites ♡

WEEK 6: Sovereign software & the Networked Commons

  • We started a restorative justice model called ACORN - (A)lways (C)are (OR) (N)ap OR (N)ourish - in our sci-fi commons.

WEEK 7: Do it with others: labor, maintenance, and longevity

  • I teamed with Meghna & Lucas to start our deconstruction company: borders without borders where we specialize in bending all four elements to make borders invisible

Quotes from assigned readngs:

Pooship (Ecosec): To become an expert in managing our shit, in the literal and figurative sense, along the whole chain involved in expelling it, collecting it, taking it away and composting it. To redignify it as a sign of luck and fertiliser for the earth/soil - spideralex

The legal framework of copyright ties authorship firmly in property and individual human creation, and prevents more fluid modes of authorial becoming from flourishing. Free Culture and intersectional, feminist, anti-colonial work reminds us that there is no tabula rasa, no original or single author; that authorial practice exists within a web of references. - Collective Conditions for Re-use

I don't know how to build and power a refrigerator, or program a computer, but I don't know how to make a fishhook or a pair of shoes, either. I could learn. We all can learn. That's the neat thing about technologies. They're what we can learn to do - Ursula K. Le Guin

#♡ The Start ♡

A person is shoveling soil into a wheelbarrow at an outdoor garden area with a shed and a chain-link fence in the background.A person in gray clothes is working with a rake in a garden with young plants and soil during early morning or late afternoon.

I’m one of three garden managers for the BIPOC, Immigrant, and Refugee community garden plot at so-called Knott Park, Portland, Oregon. Garden members with free plots are from Unite Oregon’s East Portland Pan-Immigrant Leadership and Organizing Training (EPilot) program and the Native Gathering Garden Circle. Languages spoken are English, Kinyarwanda, Spanish, and Russian. We have lots of beginner gardeners including me. It’s our city’s Parks & Rec’s first partnership with a community organization to co-run a garden space - usually garden plots in our city are based on payment and garden members are responsible to gather supplies to build their plots. Meanwhile, our plot had a grant to buy supplies to support garden members and will be bringing in workshops to assist folks on their gardening journey.

Some thoughts that started the project:

I wanted…

A gloved hand holds a small speckled egg over a garden with tilled soil and green trees in the background.

I was going to remake: https://www.tiktok.com/@tigrisli/video/7075356828133117189

But it would’ve taken too much space and too much of a build out to maintain in the space

So I kept searching…

Several gardening gloves in different colors are drying on a wire fence, with people working in a garden area in the background.

#♡ The Middle ♡

A message by Alice Yuan Zhang mentions cool zines available from Philly's Iffy Books on topics like free software, climate resilience, mending, and solar, with a link and a "seedling" icon indicating three reactions.

The image displays the text "Spread ideas with a pocket wi-fi portal" above a small electronic wi-fi module with a wireless signal icon, and below it says "a how-to guide from Iffy Books."

https://iffybooks.net/wp-content/uploads/zines/Iffy_Books_Pocket_Wifi_Portal_Zine_screen.pdf

Image showing detailed specifications for the ESP8266 Wi-Fi microchip, including its CPU (Tensilica Diamond Standard 106Micro), inputs (17 GPIO pins), manufacturer (Espressif Systems), memory (32 KiB instruction, 80 KiB user data), power requirements (3.3 V DC), and successor (ESP32).

✿ Bought ESP8266 here:

https://www.amazon.com/dp/B081PX9YFV?ref=ppx_yo2ov_dt_b_product_details&th=1

& Mailed the extra chips to SFPC classmates

✿ NOTE: Be sure to install the 1.8.x version of the Arduino IDE

A Discord chat where Alice Zhang suggests starting over with a lower Arduino package version, including a graphic on installing the Arduino IDE for macOS, and LP expresses gratitude for the advice.A chat screenshot shows a conversation between two users, Alice Yuan Zhang and LP, where LP shares a photo of holding a small blue microcontroller board near a laptop and mentions successfully getting it to work despite some challenges.

✿ NOTE: I had to play around with which version of ESP8266 to download… I wish I had bookmarked it or taken note but I promise you that it does live in this link: https://github.com/esp8266/arduino-esp8266fs-plugin/releases/

A screenshot of a file explorer showing three nested folders named "tools," "ESP8266FS," and "tool," containing a Java JAR file named "esp8266fs.jar" with a size of 7 KB dated November 25, 2019.

✿ NOTE: Sometimes my hardware wouldn’t pop on the Port options in the Arduino app. So, I had to use another cord like the zine mentions.

✿ NOTE: If you’re using images, make them all the smallest jpeg file size as possible. If not, your sketch data upload will fail.

✿ NOTE: I tried using cuter font and add .woff files to my data folder. But, my sketch data upload failed. ): Maybe you have better luck!

#♡ The End-ish♡

A Wi-Fi network named "friendship portal" is displayed under the "My Networks" section with connectivity and information icons on the right.

✿ NOTE: I wanted to showcase a fun fact about each gardener. But due to time restraints on coordinating with all of them I decided to showcase other friends in the garden.

A pink informational notice titled "soon to be wanted unwanted friends," compiled by Lillyanne at Knott Community Garden, humorously warns that she is not an expert in plant identification and advises caution when eating the listed plants, which are usually discarded.A screenshot displays an identification guide for purslane and dandelion on a pink background, with the image and description of purslane being fleshy, with thick, succulent, and reddish stems spreading into dense mats up to 20 inches across, above a "Log In" button of a "friendship portal" interface at the top.

#Click below for video of Friendship Portal

#https://vimeo.com/lillyanne/friendship

✿ NOTE: I hooked the hardware to a solar-powered power bank and stored it in a weather & waterproof box then buried it in my garden plot. To be continue in Translating the content to the different languages

A person is holding an open black case containing an electronic device with green accents and a connected circuit board, with a garden and a porta-potty visible in the background.

A hand is holding a charging electronic module connected to a portable solar panel with a sign in the background that reads "Clean your gloves."A person in pink shorts and sneakers stands near gardening tools and a small black container on soil with some green plants growing around.