- Internet provider Cal.net and Emergent Connext have deployed a LoRaWAN based solution for Terranova Ranch in Central Valley California to provide intelligence around watering.
- The solution includes Cal.net’s connectivity with the Emergent LoRaWAN gateways and management software, which the companies are offering to farms across California and beyond.
Broadband company Cal.net and wireless technologies provider Emergent have teamed to bring IoT solutions to farms in central California and a Midwest corridor via LoRaWAN networks, delivering cloud-based access to sensor data and scheduling of watering or other services in remote locations.
The first installation went live this summer at Terranova Ranch in Helm, CA, where it is helping automate irrigation and water management processes for tomatoes planted across 650 acres. Cal.net and Emergent deployed the first network of sensors at the ranch in June, for scheduled watering, with wireless valves, actuators and moisture sensors.
The tech companies are in discussion with other farmers in California’s agriculture-rich Central Valley to use the IoT connectivity for a variety of purposes related to intelligent farming. They recently offered the solution in the northwest Ohio and Indiana corridor as well. In the long term, they intend to bring the AgTech solution to rural areas across the country.
Planning Rural IoT for AgTech
Terranova Ranch has already used services from Cal.net, which deploys cellular towers in rural areas to connect farmers with the Internet, TV and phone service. Cal.net’s coverage includes north of Red Bluff, south to Bakersfield and across the Central Valley.
“We cover approximately five million rooftops with its built this network,” said Craig Stein, Cal.net’s senior VP of sales and our chief revenue officer.
Last year, Terranova and Cal.net began planning a deployment that would test IoT technology to bring intelligence to the irrigation and water management of crops and in the long-term leveraging a wide variety of sensors to make crop management more intelligent, and to support planning for future plantings.
Partnering with Emergent
They went to Emergent for its LoRaWAN-based IoT network, said Mike Roudi, CEO, Emergent Connext. Cal.net acts as system integrator to interface with the customer and deliver the complete solution using the Emergent Connext network.
“While we are a relatively new company all our operations are in place and we are now going to market in a very aggressive manner,” said Roudi.
Emergent is based in Texas, but California is the site of the first market launch. “While Texas is close to my heart —I moved to the Dallas area in 1999—we will serve the agriculture and other rural dominant industries across the nation [where they are needed],” he said.
Addressing Inefficiencies in Manual Systems
Terranova Ranch produces conventional and organic crops of a variety of vegetables. In recent years, the farm has participated in innovations related to water conservation including flooding fields to boost groundwater and, most recently, scheduling watering to ensure the amount of watering is effective and accurate on growing crops.
The ranch, like many farms, traditionally sent workers to the fields to check on sprinklers every three or four hours and turn the valves on and off as needed, travellng from one field to the next. Such work often takes place all day and night to ensure proper irrigation in the drought-prone region.
With IoT the goal was to create connectivity that automated the proper watering of crops. To enable that connectivity, Cal.Net added Emergent’s LoRaWAN-enabled sensors to existing pumps and valves that can turn the water flow on and off, and Emergent built custom software and dashboard to automate the process. They also provided a series of moisture sensors.
While the valve and pump sensors can both send and receive transmissions via several gateways, the moisture sensors only send their measurement readings, without receiving data. The gateway forwards all data to the Cal.net tower for cloud-based access. The system then dictates the watering schedule that is now in operation in 650 of the farm’s 8,000 acres.
Water Level Sensors
Terranova’s soil moisture sensors are battery powered and will last for a decade on a single battery. Sensors used to control the well pumps and valves use a power supply.
“One of the critical attributes of the LoRa technology is the fact that it communicates with the devices using very little power,” Roudi pointed out.
Emergent provides its LoRaWAN gateways, manufactured by Tektelic. With future deployments, a farmer can deploy a wide variety of sensors powered by a power supply or run on batteries.
Connectivity not only provides the devices that manage the field water with the scheduling instructions, it ensures the mechanical devices are turned on and off in the proper sequence to prevent damage to the equipment. These Class C network devices also must send an acknowledgement that they received their instructions before they can proceed to turn on or off.
Labor Savings and Water Conservation
Among the benefits for companies like Terranova are significant labor savings, according to Stein. By automating the watering schedule and turning the watering system on and off remotely, workers are freed up from this time-consuming task.
The data from sensors, managed in the cloud, help ensure water conservation and water savings— which is especially of concern as water availability is growing more scarce. For instance, the system can more precisely determine when the crops have reached peak moisture and prevent overwatering.
In the future, the technology could enable intelligence around a wide variety of conditions, and better manage crops in real time as well as ability for future planning, based on that data, according to technology officials. For instance, users can apply sensors to detect the level of salinity or fertilization to determine if there is enough nitrogen in the ground or other conditions that could impact crop health and production.
“The ultimate goal is to be able to take whatever data we get from the farmer and then add it to the other data that you would get from a third party like weather, so they can make decisions on how much to grow,” Stein said.
Users pay a monthly fee for the service and in that way don’t have to invest in IT technology or train employees to manage the data.
The Benefits of LoRa Technology
Emergent works with LoRa technology because it is a global communication protocol standard, said Roudi. “As such, any device or sensor that is LoRa certified can be connected to our network. There are thousands of LoRa certified devices already,” he said.
When providing an IoT system for a customer, Emergent engages technology partners that sell IoT devices and can recommend devices that will best support the solution being deployed. The company will procure and configure the devices for the customer “or we can add existing devices the customer might already have to our network —assuming they are LoRa enabled,” Roudi explained.
“We believe LoRa as deployed by the Emergent IoT network is absolutely perfect to get the biggest bang for the buck our of farmers’ investments in AgTech,” said Roudi. In the long term, Emergent intends to build and operate an IoT network that covers all 2.5 million square miles of rural America, including all 1.5 million square miles of agricultural lands.
Working off their agriculture results, Emergent is marketing to other rural industries like energy, smaller municipalities, utilities and healthcare. In terms of geography, the company will build a nationwide network and will sell in all rural areas.