Apps for Agri FieldMate
Every plot has its own affordable weather station
Agricultural ICT specialist AppsforAgri, best known for agricultural apps on your smartphone, introduces a unique weather station: the FieldMate† According to the company, it is the first 'internet of things' weather station on the market. It wants to use this to collect weather data at plot level. The technology is smart and also affordable.
AppsforAgri from Tilburg developed apps for Bayer, Nutreco, Nedato and FrieslandCampina, among others. However, the company of director Corné Braber also develops sensors for the agricultural sector. Now the company is trying to bring about a small revolution with the first commercial weather station connected to the internet of things.
In the internet of things, every electronic device is connected to an internet network. Data is collected, transmitted and analysed. In practice, this varies from a smart thermostat in your house to the car, which is connected to the internet, so that it knows exactly when which traffic light is green because they are also digital. Just to name a side street. A lot is also expected from IoT in agriculture. We wrote on top Boerenbusiness.nl often mentioned.
Weather stations that are connected to the IoT are too buy, but only as a do-it-yourself package. The Fieldmate is ready-made. By keeping costs low, growers can place a station per plot and make more use of weather data. For the development, AppsforAgri has teamed up with agro-meteorologists. This eventually resulted in a kind of long 'tube' that measures the climate in the soil as well as in and above the crop. It measures the soil temperature at a depth of 5 and 20 centimeters. The temperature and the RH are also measured in and above the crop.
The Fieldmate uses the Sigfox LoRaWan network. That stands for low power wide area network† This network is specifically intended for IoT applications and has a very low throughput. As a result, it requires little energy for sending and receiving data. The battery in the weather station therefore lasts 5,5 years, according to the manufacturer. The network has national coverage in both the Netherlands and Belgium. Information is sent from the weather station every 30 minutes.
The sensor data not only shows how dry or wet it is in and above the ground, AppsforAgri directly links a crop protection module to it. The disease pressure, leaf wetness, dew point and other important parameters are calculated using weather data. Models for 35 different crops are available, including potatoes, onions and carrots. You can read all data in an app for Android and iOS devices. This provides a disease pressure forecast for the next 5 days at plot level and a 14-day weather forecast.
69
euro
One weather station costs 69 euros. In addition, you pay a monthly usage fee of 19 euros per system for the weather station and the app. If you want to use the advice module for crop protection, you pay 9 euros extra per month. The monthly costs are then 28 euros. The first sensors will be delivered by the company from 1 April.
The weather station comes with a 3-year warranty. If there is a malfunction, there is an exchange service that will exchange it free of charge. The Fieldmate is the company's first IoT project. It is also working on sensors for measuring soil moisture (SoilMate), monitoring livestock feed (SiloMate), to measure the filling quantity and a sensor for measuring night frost and hay overheating.
Niels van der Boom
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