Chapter 6 Essential Elements for Designing IoT Architecture 165
The gates on the RC Byrd Locks and Dams are operated in such ways that were never intended
to protect the mussels. Operate the gates by steering the currents generated by the alternative gate
operations to regulate sediment away from the mussels.
The WIZARD platform is now capable of getting deployed even without divers in the Ohio
River from a boat. Now the US Army Corps of Engineers are able to wirelessly gather information
from the bed of the Ohio River during the dredging process without risking the lives of any divers.
CASE STUDY 2
SMART AGRICULTURE IN AUSTRALIA TO
ENSURE HEALTHY CROPS AND REDUCE
LOSSES
Introduction
Over the past 5000 years, we have been cultivating crops. However, most of the farmers have
been using the same old tools and processes for farming. We need cutting-edge technologies
that could ease the daily works, reduce losses, and improve overall yielding quantity and quality.
If we introduce smart wireless sensors for farming, then we could open a wide range of possi-
bilities for the farmers and agricultural management organizations. By receiving the real-time
information from di erent water, soil, or air quality of a farming fi eld could help the farmers
to plan smart and strategic decisions to conserve resources and optimize their farms. A young
Australian company known as Agnov8 has been developing software to manage wholesale
plant nurseries. The company has a goal to help farm growers to adopt new technologies to
help sustainable IoT projects. They have developed several wireless sensor networks to monitor
crop conditions and improve over yields.
Attaching Plants Nursery with IoT
Agnov8 has started a wide range of large environment sustainability project of the famous
Cameron’s Nursery. This is a wholesale plant grower situated in Arcadia, South Wales, Australia.
This nursery is already famous for winning 13 awards, including the prestigious United Nations
Association of Australia Award for ‘excellence in sustainable water management’. And recently
in 2015, Cameron’s Nursery has also won the Nursery Industry Environment Award. Agnov8
was also given the National Industry Innovation Award for their environmental sensors given
by the Garden & Nursery Industry Australia.
Agnov8 has successfully developed a smart system that is capable of monitoring soil, water
quality, water storage, and environmental impacts over the plants. The company has installed
various smart sensors at the site.
• The smart sensors deployed in the main dam area are able to monitor the water
temperature, PH values, electrical-conductivity, dissolved oxygen, and oxidation–
reduction potential. The sensors collect the water from the nursery during natural
rainfall and during water irrigation cycles.
• An ultrasound sensor has been used to monitor water irrigation tank volume.
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166 Internet of Things
• Smart sensors mounted in the greenhouse are very helpful in providing soil
temperature, soil volume, soil moisture, leaf wetness, air humidity, and temperature.
• The sensors installed outdoor effectively help to monitor the wind speed, direction,
gusts, and the amount of rain. It also monitors and the soil temperature and moisture
of the soil.
• The ambient controller equipped at the greenhouse is responsible for measuring the
luminosity.
Agnov8 has decided to use advanced sensors for its smart agriculture system for the following
reasons:
• The equipped sensors consume less power, are versatile, and semi-autonomous devices.
• The equipped equipment provides a huge range of sensors with measurement probes.
• The sensors are advanced enough to support standard radio and communication
protocols.
• The sensors have the capability to get integrated with cloud-based operations.
• These sensors are known for their reliability and durability in the IoT platforms.
• They are well accessible to embedded software platforms.
• Despite being advanced they are much affordable than traditional sensors.
• These sensors are easy to install and deploy.
All the sensors of the system get connected through an interlocked Wi-Fi network, by using
the WPA2 authentication method to access the devices. The data received from the sensors gets
sent to the cloud within intervals of 5–15 minutes. The nodes in the network are using HTTP
for communication with a gateway. In return, the gateway communicates by using TLS1.2 with
Agnov8’s cloud platform.
Through Agnov8’s platform, any user can get access to each sensor to understand the sen-
sor measurement data. Users can download the raw data captured by the sensors for research
purposes and business intelligence. This platform is getting continuously upgraded with latest
features to notify new events by SMS or email to alarm the users.
The farmers now claim that with the help of the new system they are able to monitor and
optimize their growing environments. This has significantly improved the production volume
and overall quality of the product.
How the system helps in removing human error and improves yielding:
• By taking scheduled readings of the water quality they have reduced human errors.
These readings include PH, EC, DO, and ORP levels. By monitoring these parameters,
the production Nursery will be helping the requirements of the Nursery authorities.
• By taking a look at the additional environmental parameters including indoors and
outdoors, they are now able to improve and better protect their yielding.
• This is an affordable investment, like a one-time investment as the operational costs are
very low. Plus, energy use and maintenance are adequately low.
The outcome of the system has been very good as it is impacting various processes related to
planting. This project has greatly reduced human errors like water quality issues and storage
readings. Now such things have been completely automated. By having frequent readings within
the interval of 15 minutes, the project has improved the reliability of the readings by a huge
margin. This gives the important daily, weekly, and monthly insights.
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