INSPIRATION
Monitoring of the crop field in conventional farming requires intensive labor, physical equipment, time, and effort.
IoT technology provides an alternative to these traditional methods. An IoT device contains one or more sensors that collect data and provide accurate information via mobile applications or other means in real-time. These sensors perform countless activities, such as soil, temperature & humidity sensing, plant & livestock tracking, and more. It also facilitates remote monitoring of farms, providing greater convenience to farmers. Further, new irrigation systems utilize IoT sensors for automation of the delivery of water to crops. These constitute evapotranspiration sensors, on-site soil moisture sensors, rain sensors, and several others. Startups are developing innovative sensor solutions that combine IoT technology with drones, robots, and computer imaging to increase the agility, accuracy, and precision of farm processes. These send on-time alerts and improve the response time for areas that need attention.
Bulgarian startup Agrila creates a modular IoT- based sensor station to facilitate sensing of vital parameters like soil moisture & temperature, wind speed & direction, rain,humidity, solar irradiation, and much more. The station is solar-powered and provides real-time alerts via mobile or web applications. Moreover, the solution also offers detailed charts, reports, and analysis of sensor data, enabling farmers
to gather insights in an economic and efficient way.
Farmer’s Hive is a Canadian startup that addresses the need for instant remote monitoring of farm equipment, crops,and microclimates. The startup develops sensors based on IoT technology for greenhouses, family farms, and fruit growers. They provide cloud services that directly store the data and detailed metrics measured by these sensors. Further,they facilitate remote monitoring in a wireless ecosystem with the help of connectivity technologies like 4G LTE-M, WiFi, or LoRaWAN networks. This allows farmers to get insights into their farm data and identify problem areas in real-time.
