Project C-Node
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Project description
Agriculture is one of the pillars of the world economy Crop management decisions are often made in ignorance of important agro-climatic information or, at best, on the basis of public station records. However, such information refers to very large areas and agro-climatic conditions can vary over very short distances. Therefore, the available information gives only a vague (sometimes even incorrect) idea to agronomists when they have to make a decision for a specific plantation.
The ability to determine if, when and how much a plant needs water, fertiliser or pesticides is key to sustainable agriculture. It is worth mentioning that irrigation accounts for approximately 70% of global water consumption and up to 58% of the pesticide treatments applied are unnecessary.
In the framework of the Cesens project (funded by ADER, the Regional Development Agency of La Rioja, Spain), Encore Lab developed agro-climatic stations (nodes) to monitor crops and provide farmers with an accurate decision support system.
The objective of the Cnode project is to obtain a simple, low-cost node to collect agro-climatic information, based on STM32-L0 and Sigfox technologies. The system shall monitor only parameters subject to significant variations over very short distances.
Each node consists of a set of sensors to monitor different variables, such as air and soil temperature, air humidity and pressure, soil hygrometry, solar radiation, leaf wetness, precipitation and wind speed and direction. Disease and pest prediction models based on data from these networks were also implemented.
Reply from Encore-Lab
Encore Lab’s goal for this EuroCPS project is to overcome current technological limitations by building a new type of sensor nodes based on the low power consumption STM32-L0 platform and Sigfox communication technologies.
The goal is to develop simple, low-cost sensing nodes with minimal maintenance requirements and a long battery life (at least five years) with little or no power supply. These simple and reliable nodes will incorporate only a few sensors to monitor the most changing parameters: air temperature and humidity and soil moisture at three different depths.
All these nodes will send data directly to the server via Sigfox communications. In this way, the system will be less exposed to problems arising from node synchronisation and failure.
The experiment will include the design, development and testing of a new shield for the STM32-L0 platform including the sensor conditioning signal circuit and the communication socket for the Sigfox module. The resulting nodes will be integrated into the existing Cesens infrastructure.
The projects developed by Encore Lab have a common technological background:
- Versatile, low-cost electronic boards, allowing for customised configuration.
- Collection of miscellaneous data from various sensors.
- Processing the information by applying the business rules particular to the problem
- Web platform to present the results to the user in an intuitive way, facilitating decision making.
Results
Encore Lab has estimated the expected results of commercialising CNODE following a conservative strategy. The target market is medium to large agribusinesses and farmers first in the European Union and then worldwide.
Encore Lab expects to sell more than 20,000 new nodes in the first five years after market launch.
