Folding at home for COVID and beauty

Using Folding@Home exhaust to germinate tropic seeds.

Joseph Marlin

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Description

Birds of paradise are tropical flowers with dramatic spiked orange and blue petals. These beautiful flowers can take up to ten years to bloom, but the first challenge is just getting the seeds to germinate. The seeds should be kept at 80-85 degrees F during the 2 month sprouting process. Lows are still in the 40's where I live, so I needed a different way to keep these little seeds warm.

It occurred to me that since I have been wanting to join the fight against COVID with Folding@Home, I could accomplish both these goals at once. I designed a little adapter that fits onto my laptop's fan exhaust vent, and pipe that hot air straight into my little germination box.

Details

The project was very successful. Temperatures hover about fifteen degrees above ambient temperature, and I hope my seeds will germinate.

Next time I do this, I think I will use an Arduino with a servo and a temperature sensor to automatically close and open a vent on the cardboard box for better temperature regulation.

The main goal of the project is also successful. Although my computer is slow and old, I'm still able to contribute points to the Hackaday team in humanity's fight against COVID-19.