During recent decades, both animal and crop production went through significant transformation towards automation and mechanization. Considering continuous growth of consumers‘ demand and consumption, increasing the production efficiency is crucial.
Utilizing modern technologies as an automation tool naturally is the first step towards increasing quality and quantity of production as well as lowering costs at the same time.
Agricultural environment in every form (field, greenhouse, orchard or barn) contains huge amount of dynamically changing information.
Our online IoT monitoring system will help you to check your agricultural environment status within seconds.
The measurement of physical values is just the start of the whole process. We provide data analytics, overall equipment efficiency (OEE) and system controlling services. Our system is capable of:
- managing irrigation and air conditioning in fields and greenhouses,
- frost / icing predicting and warning,
- mold an pests reproduction risk warning.
Therefore we provide answers to key questions, such as when to irrigate, aerate stored crops, or prepare exterior production for ground frosts.
In order to better understand IoT devices application and subsequent benefits for agriculture, let’s take a look at some of practical examples.
Orchards
Our clients are fruit growers from various locations across Slovakia, different by orchard size, relief, soil composition or number of yearly sunny days.
We place our weather stations at carefully chosen places across the orchard. These stations measure:
- air temperature at the ground level,
- air temperature at 2 meters above the ground,
- soil temperature and humidity,
- precipitation amount,
- wind speed and direction,
- dew point.
The natural stem increment and leaves’ humidity are measured by sensors, placed directly on crops.
Software platform, deployed either into client’s infrastructure, or into safe, remote cloud storage, is an added value of our IoT solutions.
Orchards‘ and fields‘ irrigation
Wireless soil moisture sensors are placed in selected rows.
Irrigation system valves are managed by our software, based on measured values. This helps us to effectively irrigate necessary locations only. Thanks to that our clients can save energy costs.
We also monitor irrigation pumps bearings vibrations. If vibrations increase, our software analyzes the data and sends an alert towards maintenance.
Greenhouses
Many greenhouses face quite common problem – the presence of rodents, which are damaging wires. Our sensors are mostly wireless, powered by batteries or solar energy.
Our solutions are able to be incorporated into existing infrastructure. We can remake existing wired sensors into wireless, effectively eliminating extra cables. In addition, our software can be easily integrated into customer’s information system, so our clients can work in familiar IT environment without unnecessary ballast – kilometers of wires.
In every row of crops, wireless RFID readers monitor entries and exits of pickers. Our software analyzes the picker’s efficiency and can save these data into company HR system.
Barns
Wireless sensors comprehensively monitor the environment, where poultry, livestock or pigs are located.
We measure:
- air temperature and humidity,
- CO2 and methane concentration
- natural and artificial light intensity
- water PH in supply system.
As well as in previous cases, we can achieve energy costs saving by analyzing data and subsequent management of ventilation control units, the water supply system, lighting (desired ratio of natural and artificial light) and heating system.
Data acquired by monitoring the air-flow in ventilation system determine:
- necessity of ventilation system cleaning,
- distributive flaps settings (quantity of delivered and aspirate air).
Same as in case of field irrigation we monitor water pumps vibrations and casing temperature. Our clients are alerted to excessive bearings wear well in advance, according to ISO 10816.
Warehouses and silos
Wireless sensors placed in the environment monitor:
- air temperature and humidity,
- doors and gates opening,
- stored crops humidity,
- silo capacity status.
Except of previously mentioned ventilation system management, we help our clients to set optimal conditions for various crops storage in order to prevent molding and rotting.
Interested into learning more about IoT system implementation in agriculture? Feel free to contact us via e-mail or phone.
