Breaking Ground in Smart Agriculture

Z Farms was facing three challenges: costly irrigation systems with water as a limited resource, narrow optimal ranges of soil moisture for growth with difficult maintenance and farm operators could not simply turn on irrigation systems like a faucet.

The customer wanted to effectively monitor all their milk procurement centers placed in remote villages, to automate the centers for capturing the milk data in near real time and to enable direct farmer payments.

The dairy farm as a result of being completely manual in nature had become completely unproductive and unprofitable. Technology intervention was the need of the hour

Farming Orchids is the most successful form of precision farming in Taiwan, and also the most exported flower. Orchids need a specific temperature and humidity conditions to grow and bloom, and its flowering time may not be in line with market demands, so the price collapses when there is overproduction. Therefore, some farmers began to import automated greenhouse control systems for breeding and forcing, which not only improves quality, but also effectively controls the production period and yield to ensure revenue. In 2012, an orchid farmer built a Forcing Greenhouse of about 200 pings (approximately 661 Square Meters) in Tainan, Taiwan. The system integrator adopted Advantech’s APAX-5000 series programmable automation controllers to build the control platform, coupled with Advantech WebAccess HMI/SCADA software, to achieve cloud monitoring. The staff of the orchid field can monitor important data anytime via smart phone, iPad, and other handheld devices, and control the growth and flowering conditions. System requirements: In the past, most environmental control systems of orchid greenhouses in Taiwan used PLCs (Programmable Logic Controller) with poorscalability and control, and could not be connected to the Internet formonitoring from the cloud. For advanced database analysis and networking capability, the PC platform must be adopted. Therefore, PAC Systems (Programmable Automation Controller) with both PLC programming capabilities andPC functions is a better choice.The environmental control of the Orchid greenhouse switches on and off devices like fan, shade net, cooling/heat pump, liquid flow control, water-cooling wall etc. It is controlled by a control panel of electric controllers, and is driven by a motor, to adjust the greenhouse temperature, humidity, and other environmental conditions to the set parameters.

DigiBale, wanted to apply technology know-how and IP from implementations successfully to more agriculture sectors including cotton, forestry, sugarcane and cattle. However, farmers and growers still have worries about the connected technology.

On a typical sheep gathering session, 10-12 farmers face difficulties finding all their animals. The implication is that both animal and farmer may have to stay out for longer than necessary. When there is heavy snow, this compounds the problems and the cold induces distress upon both farmer and animal.