Farmshelf
Smart Indoor Farm
Farmshelf is a New York City based indoor farming start-up which seeks to enable anyone to grow healthy and delicious food where they live, work and eat. By providing a fully enclosed and intelligent hydroponic growing environment, crop conditions can be optimized for yield and flavor profiles.
Each system is designed to manage nutrients, airflow, ambient temperature and lighting conditions for several separate crop shelves at once.
While monitoring and controlling the system growing conditions, the Smart Indoor Farm is able to provide wireless updates and diagnostics information to maximize farm uptime and yield. The Farmshelf Smart Indoor Farm eliminates packaging waste, and reduces the crop to plate distance from miles to feet in restaurants, hotels, corporate cafeterias and schools.
Working with Farmshelf as a consultant for nearly two years, I provided a wide spectrum of guidance and engineering services for the Farmshelf C-suite.
My initial work focused on coordination with new contract manufacturing partners, but quickly grew to include analysis and redesign of system electronics to improve lighting performance and efficiency.
On the operations front, I helped to develop and execute a prioritized recruiting strategy for hardware engineers. Together with members of the C-suite, we collaborated to develop, compare and execute hardware and R&D roadmaps.
Horticultural Lighting Optimization
I would go on to provide several iterations of analysis and lighting solutions to improve lighting quality for a range of crops while increasing electrical and optical efficiency. There were numerous system constraints to work within including power budget, thermal management, form factor and unit BOM cost.
I presented a variety of cutting edge horticultural lighting solutions, and leveraged my extensive electronics supply and test network to optimize, build, validate and deploy those solutions.
Regulatory Coordination
The size, weight and operation of the Farmshelf Smart Indoor Farm presented unique challenges for the necessary regulatory testing. I worked closely with the engineering and operations teams as well as external test bodies to plan, coordinate and execute successful wireless and safety certifications.
The final safety certifications required additional labeling and testing in the manufacturing process, which I also coordinated and deployed to ensure compliant production of the systems.
Responsibilities
Engineering Leadership and Culture Development
Electronics Design and Development
Product Definition and Architecture
CM / Supplier Coordination and Management
Quality / Manufacturing Engineering
Safety / Wireless Regulatory Compliance
R&D / Rapid Prototyping
Competitive Intelligence Analysis
Engineering Recruiting
Project Management