Architecture options for data collection

Open Ag Technology FIoT
1

We have several use cases that need to be covered in order to fully support the farms which fall into a few different categories

  • Grid vs. battery/solar powered
  • Direct network access vs. network bridge
  • High vs. low bandwidth (e.g. video/images vs. sensor values)
  • Centralized/single-use vs. distributed multi-use systems

For example, if a farm just has one freezer that they want to monitor then they could just plug a sensor directly into a single board computer using wall power, and connect to wifi. On the other hand, if they want many remote sensors across the entire farm than the system gets more complicated with power and local networking needed.

In designing these different systems I think we have 3 primary factors to consider:

  • Cost
  • Ease of use
  • Openness

https://www.ibm.com/developerworks/library/iot-lp101-best-hardware-devices-iot-project/index.html provides a good overview of the kinds of chooses that need to be made.

Does anyone want to work on a desision tree based for these options?

1 Like
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As a point of reference, here are some of the use cases proposed by @dornawcox

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I will love to know more about this.

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@ymi what would you like to know more about? See http://forum.goatech.org/t/get-invovled-in-the-farm-internet-of-things-fiot-working-group/84 for ways to get involved.

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https://youtu.be/Lrn1gfq3YLE points to using ARM MBED for LoRa nodes to facilitate over the air firmware updated. For production deployments this will be key.

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Designing this system on a small farm

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We are in the early stages of putting this all together. We are always interested to learn from farmers what their needs are and how we can better design things. Would you be available for a quick interveiw about your needs?

8

Yes. Just let me know when.

9

Hi @ymi
I think I sent you a pm a while back, did you get that? Still up for chatting? Maybe join us over in https://riot.im/app/#/room/#fiot:matrix.org and we can chat.