Smart Greenhouse Project - Tropical Fruits

Poverty alleviation has been one of the top priorities in China’s modern social development. In order to help farmers increase income and improve living conditions, the Chinese government encourages farmers to grow fruits or crops that have higher economic yields.

While fruits that have always been grown in the southern regions, such as lemon, wax apple, dragon fruit, and papaya, have earned increasing popularity in the north, their prices are also relatively higher in the northern markets. Thus farmers in the north can earn higher income if they grow the southern produce rather than the usual northern fruits or crops.

In this case, farmers in Laiwu in Shandong Province embrace the initiative of “growing southern fruits in the north,” in the National Smart Agriculture Industrial Park located in the county.

While the farmers were experimenting growing wax apples in one greenhouse at the Industrial Park, they came across some obstacles:

  • The greenhouse environment needs to be strictly monitored and controlled to simulate the environment in the south, or the fruit quality would be compromised.
  • The management cost is high. A system to automatically control the fertilizer, ventilation, thermal and irrigation system is in need.

Seeed was more than happy to take part in this project at the invitation from our partner, a Beijing-based system integrator for agriculture. By deploying SenseCAP in the greenhouse, the following environmental data was collected and monitored in real-time:
- CO2
- Light intensity
- Soil temperature
- Soil moisture
- Soil electrical conductivity
- Photosynthetically active radiation
The data was collected via LoRa Sensor Nodes and sent to the cloud via the LoRa Gateway.

While Seeed SenseCAP provides the wireless sensor network solution to collect and monitor environmental data, our partner integrates SenseCAP solution with the controlling system to achieve the following goals:

- Automatically fertilize and irrigate the plants:

When SenseCAP detects deficiency (lower than the preset value) in soil moisture or fertilizer, it triggers the fertilizing and irrigation systems to fertilize and water.

- Automatically turn on the ventilation system:

SenseCAP is connected to the ventilation system, which is activated to cool the greenhouse when the temperature is detected to be higher than the preset value for desired growth.

- Automatically manage the thermal blanket:

The greenhouse thermal blanket helps to retain 95% of the radiant heat and minimizes condensation by containing air, moisture, and vapor in the greenhouse. When SenseCAP is connected to the control system of the thermal blanket, the system can be triggered to fold or unfold the blanket based on the environmental data.

This is the pilot run of IoT application in “southern fruits grown in the north” scenario, and we are happy that Seeed SenseCAP plays a role in contributing to this initiative. It could gradually collect and accumulate important data for farming experts to provide evaluation for smart agriculture and precision farming, which will eventually further benefit farmers.

“Working with Seeed has been a great pleasure. It’s really useful to introduce SenseCAP, the industrial sensor network solution to our smart agriculture park, as it shows us precise data and helps our existing system to perform automatically. This creates a much better growing environment for the wax apples. We have had a lot of support from the Seeed technical team”

comments Han, Greenhouse Project Expert at our partnered System Integrator.

With SenseCAP deployed in the greenhouse in April of 2019, we received a package of freshly-harvested wax apples from the farmers in August. The wax apples actually tasted sweeter than those grown in the south, thanks to the longer daylength (higher light intensity) in the north during summertime.

Challenge or problem: Poverty alleviation has been one of the top priorities in China’s modern social development. In order to help farmers increase income and improve living conditions, the Chinese government encourages farmers to grow fruits or crops that have higher economic yields. While fruits that have always been grown in the southern regions, such as lemon, wax apple, dragon fruit, and papaya, have earned increasing popularity in the north, their prices are also relatively higher in the northern markets. Thus farmers in the north can earn higher income if they grow the southern produce rather than the usual northern fruits or crops. - The greenhouse environment needs to be strictly monitored and controlled to simulate the environment in the south, or the fruit quality would be compromised. - The management cost is high. A system to automatically control the fertilizer, ventilation, thermal and irrigation system is in need.
Platform(s) Included in Success Story: Seeed Studio SenseCAP Platform
Device(s) Included in Success Story: SenseCAP LoRaWAN CO2 Sensor, SenseCAP LoRaWAN Light Intensity Sensor, SenseCAP LoRaWAN Soil Temperature, VWC & EC Sensor, SenseCAP LoRaWAN PAR Sensor.
Additional Components Included in Success Story: SenseCAP LoRaWAN Gateway
Industries (Solutions):
Focus: Sub-Metering
Agriculture
Cities & Municipalities
Health & Healthcare
Infrastructure
Energy & Heating
Logistics
Manufacturing
Production
Properties & Buildings
Retail
Security & Safety
Other
Functionality (Devices):
ACCELERATION
AIR HUMIDITY
AIR PARTICLES
AIR PRESSURE
AIR TEMPERATURE
ANALOG INPUT TRANSMITTER
BAROMETRIC PREASSURE
BUTTON / SWITCH
CARBON MONIXIDE
CATTLE TRACKING
CHEMICAL DETECTION
CO2
COLD CHAIN MANAGEMENT
CUSTOMER SATISFACTION/FEEDBACK
DENDROMETER
DIGITAL INPUT TRANSMITTER
DIFFERENTIAL PRESSURE
DISTANCE
DOOR ACTIVITY
E-INK DISPLAY
ELECTRICAL CONDUCTIVITY
ELECTRICITY METERING
ENERGY METERING
ENERGY OPTIMIZATION
FLOOR DRAIN LEAKAGE
GAS DETECTION
GAS METERING
GAS TANK LEVEL
GYROSCOPE
HUMIDITY
HVAC MONITORING
INCLINOMTETER
INDOOR ENVIRONMENT
INFRARED PYROMETER
IR
LEAF WETNESS
LEAKAGE
LEVEL
LIGHT
LIGHTNING AVERAGE DISTANCE
LIGHTNING STRIKE COUNT
LIQUID LEVEL
MANHOLE MONITORING
MBUS - LoRaWAN BRIDGE
MODBUS - LoRaWAN BRIDGE
MOISTURE
MOTION DETECTION
MOVEMENT
MULTI PURPOSE
NITRIC OXIDE
NITROGEN DIOXIDE
NOISE LEVEL
OCCUPANCY
OPEN / CLOSE
OPTICAL DISOLVED OXYGEN
OPTICAL PULSE COUNTER
OVERFLOW MONITORING
OXYGEN
OZONE
PAR LIGHT
PARKING OCCUPANCY
PARTICULATE MATTER (PM)
PASSAGE DETECTION
PEST CONTROL
pH LEVEL
PHOTOSYNTHETICALLY ACTIVE RADIATION
POSITION / TRACKING / GPS
PRESSURE
PROXIMITY
PULSE COUNTER
PUSH BUTTON ALARM
RAIN GAUGE
RELATIVE HUMIDITY
RELEASE BUTTON
REMOTE POWER SOCKET
REMOTE RADIATOR CONTROLLER
REMOTE READING OF EXISTING METER
REMOTE RELAY CONTROLLER
REMOTE VALVE
SALTINITY
SMOKE DETECTION
SOIL MOISTURE / IRRIGATION
SOIL TEMPERATURE
SOIL VOLUMETRIC WATER CONTENT (VWC)
SOLAR RADIATION
SOUND
STRAIN/WEIGHT
STRUCTURAL LOAD
STRUCTURAL TENSION
SUB METERING AND BILLING
SURFACE TEMPERATURE
SURGE ARRESTER
TEMPERATURE
TILT MONITORING
TURBIDITY
TVOC
VACUUM PRESSURE
VAPOR PRESSURE
VEHICLE COUNTER
VIBRATION
VOC
WASTE MANAGEMENT
WATER FAULT CIRCUIT BREAKER
WATER METERING
WATER TEMPERATURE
WEIGHING SCALE
WIND DIRECTION
WIND GUST
WIND SPEED
WINTER ROAD MAINTENANCE
Applicable Environment (Devices):
Indoor
Outdoor
IP Rating (Devices): IP66
Access technology: LoRaWAN
Certified members: Seeed Studio
Contact information: Contact: Andy DH Pan, Email: dahong.pan@seeed.cc
Company website: www.seeed.cc
Listing created Sep 13, 2021

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