dthorpe163's DreamBoard Design 733700 : Field environment monitor

Possible Applications

As a maker myself, it's an endless frustration having to not only find appropriate sensors from different sources (usually using different interfaces, connectors, voltages, etc.) - which when building out at scale, is cost ineffective and fraught with risk and complexity. In a world facing ongoing climate change, production industries such as farming are suffering in the face of a lack of information and micro-climate changes. While this sensorboard is predominantly focused on production industries, it is well-suited to mesh topologies over a wider area. 802.11 Wi-Fi is unsuitable due to range and power requirements, whereas the Zigbee handles this well. You would simply have a "home base" appliance at a practical location able to contact the mesh, and this device would feed telemetry back-to-base, such as via Wi-Fi or ruggedised ethernet. Each sensorboard would be scattered throughout a field, with a small MPU (such as an ESP8266), battery and solar panel attached to power it. Through the MPU, you could potentially also add some localised "response" capabilities, such as being able to control a water valve to adjust the flow of water to a particular location in the field due to it being saturated in sun at that time. Additional sensors not supported by the sensorboard (e.g. capacitive soil moisture detection) could be expanded from the MPU, enabling a fully-fledged, low-power environment sensor platform, with potential response capabilities. I envision a IoT reporting platform as the output from this, with a map of a field with an overlay of temperatures mapped throughout.

Sensor Framework

The sensors specified on the sensorboard are predominantly those relevant in a production field. This includes:

• Blue Light sensor for measuring the blue light intensity (this is particularly important for animals and circadian rhythms, but could also be used to help identify the position of the sun in the sky).
• Infrared Spectrum sensor for measuring the infrared intensity, particularly important for growth of plants.
• Passive proximity sensor, for detecting movement close to the sensor (e.g. an intruding animal or human, or in the herd of animals, identifying main congregation points and movements)
• Zigbee, for communication as part of a wider mesh across the field.
• High Accuracy temperature and humidity, as key factors in growth of plants.
• Standard Accuracy pressure sensor, for identifying the ambient pressure conditions.
• Magnetometer, which depending on the type used could measure either direction or local magnetic variances which are known to have an effect on plant growth.

Parts List