Thanks!! It so happens I'm signing on a house on a few acres Monday and want to set up remote soil sensors - this seems like just the thing for coordination.
Coincidentally, I also, also, started a project to do soil analysis remotely! :D Tho mine is just a few crude proofs of concept and a lot of dreaming. The eventual goal is an inexpensive automated black box box that provides me with fresh lettuce daily, with no human intervention.
I'm curious, what route are you taking for sensors? Off the shelf moisture? NPK? DIY? I love the idea of logging everything that's possible to log :>
Oh, those soil moisture sensors, they are so fascinating.
I spent a number of exciting year developing a high frequency soil impedance scanner and finally understood why I was doing it. To confirm the obvious :)
I've been working on a hardware data logger device and web software platform that monitors soil moisture and other environmental metrics that produce-growers care about – soil temperature and conductivity (which indicates salinity or fertiliser penetration), air/canopy temperature, rainfall, irrigation, humidity, solar radiation, etc.
We've been working on the product for about 4-5 years (as a side project while working on other things to pay the bills). Initially it was a smartphone-connected device using Bluetooth and manual data retrieval, but we've just reached production-ready stage of a newer version that uses the new LTE Cat-M1 cellular data protocol (which uses existing 4G cellular infrastructure but is optimised for lower power and longer range).
So we now have a whole lot of these devices sitting in crops (E.g., grapevines, wheat, fruit/vegetables, nuts, sugar cane), some of them over 20km from their nearest cell tower (you can extend the range further with high-gain antennas but we haven't had to do that yet), automatically uploading all this data and generating various data views (time series graphs and dashboards) to help growers make decisions about when/how much to irrigate etc.
It can also do reactive/proactive stuff like detect when temperature close to the surface drops to near 2°C overnight and send out frost warning alerts, and over time we intend to make the data platform powerful enough that it can do things like automate the switching on/off of irrigation pumps in response to soil moisture level trends.
I don't have a website to point to yet. I'm working on a demo site now.
But I'd be interested to hear from anyone who is working on tech like this or is interested to work on it or partner in some way (email address is in my profile).
Despite having worked in the space for nearly 5 years, I'm still not sure why this tech isn't more commonplace – i.e., why every professional grower isn't already using something like this. This kind of tech has been around for a long time, so we're not doing anything completely new, just doing it more affordably and hopefully making better use of modern tech.
From what I've been able to learn about the market, it seems that the big industrial-scale producers use this type of tech, though what they use is costly and sophisticated to install/maintain. But for many smaller growers, it's considered not important enough to make the investment, and they're happy doing things the way they and the previous generations have always done it.
But with water scarcity becoming an issue in many parts of the world it will become increasingly important for growers of all scales to use this kind of tech to avoid water wastage.
We've also had the opportunity to trial the equipment with growers in Far-North Queensland, inland from the Great Barrier Reef. The government and industry bodies in that region are interested to see how this kind of tech could be used to minimise over-watering leading to fertiliser run-off into the sea, which is a contributor to coral bleaching.
So, yeah, that's what I'm doing. Happy to hear from anyone interested to know more or work together.
I'd like to send you several surface and subsoil sensors to deploy that will communicate back to me via GPRS. Just a couple of minutes is needed to deploy each sensor.
And it would be very helpful if you could send back a soil sample at my expense.
Developing low-cost wireless soil moisture sensors for agriculture. It's old technology but the proven benefit is huge, and adoption has been really poor (mostly) because of the cost.
If you could find out what sensor the NetAtmo is using you could do an apples to apples comparison.
I bought a cheap soil sensor from microcenter that is absolute garbage. According to a few YouTubers it would corrode in a couple weeks. They recommended some higher quality sensors.
I have an acre in South-East New Mexico and am hoping to get the proximate 10 acres within a year or so. If you need another soil sensor deployment I'd also install and send you photos and soil samples.
I'm an agronomist by training if it matters.
It's arid and the soil has a fair amount of gypsum. It is on a hillside around my home and has never been cultivated (except a small patch for my garden). I'll shoot you an email you can respond if interested.
One of my clients which I'm proud of, Phytech, is deploying huge number of plant sensors to measure their status and help save water by planning how much to irrigate.
They are doing very well and have huge customers in the US and Australia.
I’ve been looking for soil moisture sensors for months and never come across that site, just on the first page of IOT stuff there are 5 good options on Tindie.
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