Whether you garden as a hobby or make your living farming, you need to pay attention to the growing conditions of your plants and crops. And the faster you can react to these conditions, the better your yields.
The Cellular IoT Soil Moisture Monitor reference design aims to be a proof-of-concept for operations that need far-flung sensors throughout an operation that can report back to the cloud on regular intervals. The hardware and software is ready to use, and all components can be ordered at Digikey. If you start with the recommended components of this design you can quickly prototype your own ag-tech solution, and customize where and when necessary.
Parts list
- Nordic nRF9160 DK
- MikroE Hydro Probe Click
- MikroE Weather Click
- MikroE IR Gesture Click
- MikroE Arduino UNO Click Shield
- LIS2DH Development Board
- MikroE Shuttle Click
- SIM card of your choice, this design uses a Hologram SIM card
Monitoring soil moisture level, ambient temperature, pressure, humidity, and RGB light intensity allows farmers to take action before the plant’s demise. The Soil Moisture Monitor design takes advantage of the ease of use of the Nordic nRF9160 DK and cellular network connection, sending sensor data to Golioth’s Cloud at changeable periodic intervals.
You should buy all the necessary components from DigiKey (listed above), load the precompiled firmware image, and you are set for success to start sending data to the Golioth Cloud. You benefit from the well-tested software running on the nRF9160 DK and can immediately connect to the Golioth Cloud with the free Prototype tier. Connect up to 50 devices at no cost, utilizing all the Device Management Features Golioth has to offer, like Over-The-Air Firmware Updates, LightDB State, LightDB Stream, Logging, Settings, and Remote Procedure Calls.
If you want to deep dive into Zephyr RTOS and expand this Reference Design, head to the project’s GitHub page, clone the repository, and modify the open-source code to truly make this your own customizable device.