Internet of Farming: Arduino-based, backyard aquaponics

Rik Kretzinger grew up on a Christmas tree farm and spent his college years studying horticulture, but he found it too difficult to make a living as a small farmer so he spent most of his career working for others.  A few years ago, he began to tinker with aquaponics (fishfarming hydroponics), sensors and the open-source microcontroller Arduino to create an automated garden that could compete with commercial farms. For the first couple of years he spent thousands of hours struggling to learn programming