Agricultural Multi-Sensor Station

Within the Connected Sensor Intelligence project at the HEF, application examples will be established which demonstrate the suitability and potential of the developed sensor data infrastructure. In Dürnast, a use case was developed in which a field plot is equipped with a multi-sensor station and local environmental and soil parameters are measured.

For this purpose, the µMetos ET0 Farming - Sensorstation was purchased from Pessl Instruments, which proved to be suitable due to its reliability, robustness and energy saving. For communication, a LoRaWAN module was embedded, so that the devices can be connected via a public network such as Everynet or The Things Network. The currently recorded parameters include air temperature, humidity, precipitation, solar radiation, wind speed and direction, soil temperature and leaf moisture.

One of the main problems that many monitoring devices have is the need to constantly charge the battery by manually connecting them to charging stations. Constantly monitoring the device's battery charge level and checking the charge level is extremely time consuming. To solve this problem, the stations are equipped with a solar panel that generates energy from sunlight. In addition, the tracker uses an integrated LiPo battery that holds the charge for a longer period of time and then recharges when the solar panel is exposed to sunlight.