The Honest Version
When you visit our website and look at Edenix, you're looking at a system built on top of FarmBot Genesis — an open-source precision agriculture platform created by Rory Aronson in 2011 at California Polytechnic State University. FarmBot's hardware designs are released under a CC0 Public Domain Dedication, and its software under the MIT License. This means anyone, anywhere, can use, modify, and build upon FarmBot's work — including for commercial purposes.
That's exactly what we've done. And we think you should know.
We could have kept quiet about this. The open-source licenses don't require us to credit FarmBot on our marketing website. The hardware is public domain. The software only asks that we keep the MIT license notice in our codebase — which we do. But staying silent about the shoulders we stand on didn't feel right, and it wouldn't serve you as a customer.
Why FarmBot Genesis?
When our founder set out to build an autonomous farming system for Indian conditions, a critical decision had to be made: design everything from scratch, or build on an existing proven platform?
We chose FarmBot Genesis for specific, practical reasons:
- Proven maturity. FarmBot has been in continuous development since 2011. The current Genesis v1.8 design is the result of nine major hardware iterations, each informed by real-world deployment feedback from users globally.
- Institutional trust. Over 500 educational institutions — universities, research labs, and schools — have deployed FarmBot systems. When we approach KVKs and agricultural universities in India, the FarmBot ecosystem's track record provides immediate credibility.
- Comprehensive documentation. FarmBot's step-by-step assembly guides, hardware specs, and software documentation are some of the most thorough in open-source hardware. This directly benefits our customers and our own engineering process.
- Active global community. The FarmBot community forum has thousands of users sharing modifications, troubleshooting tips, and custom tool designs. Our institutional customers benefit from this global knowledge base.
- Engineering honesty. Building a CNC farming robot from scratch as a solo founder would take years of iteration to reach the reliability that FarmBot has already achieved. Starting from a proven design lets us focus our engineering effort where it matters most — making the system work in India.
What Kalp Yantra Actually Built
So if the core platform is FarmBot Genesis, what exactly did we build? Our work falls into two categories: India-specific adaptations that make the system usable here, and value-added services that no imported kit can provide.
Engineering Adaptations
- Voice control in 28+ languages — including Hindi, Gujarati, Tamil, Telugu, Bengali, Marathi, and more. A farmer or lab technician can operate Edenix in their mother tongue.
- Monsoon-grade weatherproofing — India's climate is nothing like California's. We've engineered for heavy rain, high humidity, dust, and temperature extremes that the standard FarmBot kit isn't designed for.
- Local manufacturing — Edenix components are manufactured in India, reducing cost and eliminating the import duties, shipping delays, and customs complications that make buying a FarmBot kit directly from the US impractical for most Indian institutions.
- Custom automation sequences — Lua-based planting and weeding sequences designed for Indian crop varieties and growing patterns.
Services You Can't Import
- On-site installation — A Kalp Yantra technician assembles, levels, and calibrates the system at your location. You don't need mechanical skills.
- Training in local languages — For institutional buyers, we provide hands-on training for staff and students in Hindi, Gujarati, and English.
- Direct phone and WhatsApp support — When something goes wrong at 2 PM on a Tuesday, you call us. You don't post on an international forum and wait for someone in a different timezone to respond.
- Institutional procurement support — Budget justification documents, technical reports, and custom quotes formatted for Indian institutional purchase processes. We understand how KVK and university procurement works.
- EMI financing — Flexible payment options that make a ₹2.5–5 lakh system accessible. FarmBot Inc doesn't offer financing, let alone in Indian rupees.
For Our Institutional Customers
When you buy Edenix, you're not just getting hardware. You're getting a locally manufactured, locally supported, locally financed system built on a globally proven platform. Your students and researchers can access FarmBot's global documentation, community forums, and open-source code — while receiving installation, training, and support from a company based in Gujarat that picks up the phone in Hindi.
What About the Edenix Rover?
We want to be clear about a distinction: Edenix Fixed (our current product) is built on FarmBot Genesis. But Edenix Rover — our mobile farming platform currently in development — is a separate product being designed from the ground up by Kalp Yantra. The Rover uses ArduPilot and Pixhawk flight controller architecture, not FarmBot's codebase. When the Rover launches, that distinction will be clearly documented.
Why Tell You All This?
Three reasons.
First, it's the right thing to do. Rory Aronson and the FarmBot team chose permissive open-source licenses specifically to enable people like us to build commercial products on their work. The least we can do is acknowledge that publicly.
Second, it builds trust. If you're a KVK director evaluating a ₹5 lakh purchase, or a university professor considering Edenix for your research lab, you deserve to know exactly what you're buying. A system built on a globally proven platform with 500+ institutional deployments is a safer bet than a black-box product from an unknown startup. We want you to verify our claims — and FarmBot's open-source nature lets you do exactly that.
Third, it's what open source is for. FarmBot's mission is to make precision agriculture accessible to everyone. An Indian company adapting their platform for the Indian market, manufacturing locally, and providing local support — that's the open-source model working exactly as intended.
Explore the Ecosystem
We encourage our customers — especially researchers and students — to explore FarmBot's open-source resources:
- FarmBot Genesis Hardware Documentation — detailed assembly guides, CAD models, and tech specs
- FarmBot Software Documentation — web app guides, developer resources, and API reference
- FarmBot Community Forum — thousands of users sharing tips, mods, and troubleshooting
- FarmBot on GitHub — all source code, open for inspection and contribution
And if you want to see what Kalp Yantra has built on top of this foundation, get in touch. We'd love to show you.