PFC v3.0 Ice Cube

The Personal Food Computer is an open-source, desktop-sized closed environment growth chamber for enabling a new generation of digital farmers.

Each PFC design was a collective effort by my mechatronics team at MIT Media Lab. I led chassis prototyping and production during development. Check out our PFC v3.0 Wikipedia or PFC v3.0 Github pages for a deeper dive.

Personal Food Computer v3.0 "Ice Cube"

We’re all about mods at the Media Lab. We open-source our hardware and software not just so our community can copy it, but so that they can hack it and make it all their own. Just before our release, I forked our PFC v3.0 design and created an all-clear, polycarbonate version. We call it Ice Cube. Looks like glass, smells like basil.

My team was gearing up for its fall demo season, and PFC v3.0 release. I had already been playing around with polycarbonate with the PFC v3.0, fabricating windows and clear tops to show off its new PCB "brain." I thought I would take the clear effect to the next step, and make a whole chassis out of polycarbonate. It would be perfect for a demo space, since it would help spectators see all of the PFC v3.0's new bells and whistles—USB cameras, sensors, and actuators—that my team embedded inside of its chassis.

In 2019 the PFC v3.0 Ice Cube was featured in exhibits at the Barbican and Victoria and Albert Museums in London, and Cooper Hewitt in New York.

775 670 3447 / tsavas[@]media.mit.edu