XAG and Huawei Cooperate on 5G-powered Smart Agriculture

Sponsored by the world’s leading telecom supplier Huawei Technologies，the Huawei Cloud City Summit, under the theme ‘Cloud for Good’, was recently held in China’s southern city Guangzhou to promote industry innovations driven by 5G technology. As a global agriculture technology company and industrial UAS manufacturer, XAG was invited to attend the summit to share its prospect of 5G-powered agriculture in collaboration with Huawei.

On the summit, Justin Gong, Co-founder and Vice President of XAG, gave a keynote speech to explain the company’s multi-layer smart agriculture solutions. XAG has developed drones, internet-of-things (IoT), artificial intelligence (AI) and other digital farming tools to help farmers effectively grow high-quality produce without exerting excessive environmental pressure on the planet. Specifically, with improved efficiency and user experience, 5G is expected to become a new catalyst to accelerate the development of intelligent agriculture.

This July, XAG has partnered with Huawei on a smart agriculture project in which the two companies initiate joint experiments to explore the potential applications of 5G, AI and Cloud Computing in agriculture.

Since 2016, XAG has already joined hands with Huawei in developing the Agriculture IoT System (XIoT) that aims to rebuild the trust between producers and consumers with a more transparent, traceable food value chain. XAG’s FarmMonitor and FarmCam can collect real-time meteorological and soil data, such as rainfall, wind speed, soil moisture and temperature, and capture HD field images to help farmers manage their lands more scientifically. These intelligent sensors are empowered with Huawei’s communication and HiSilicon imaging solutions that enable high-resolution, smooth monitoring of crop growth status while saving a huge amount of data usage.

XAG FarmCam 1

5G has the potential to transform agriculture, as the development of smart farming is heavily dependent on both mobile internet and automated devices to achieve real-time, precise production and management. XAG’s cooperation with Huawei is expected to expand throughout the entire production system, with the emphasis on leveraging 5G technology to seamlessly interconnect people and a vast diversity of smart agricultural devices in new level of performance, cost-efficiency and immersive experience.

With much higher peak data rate, lower latency and massive capability, 5G can not only raise the speed and precision of data transmission and processing, but also improve the control accuracy and stability of drones and robots. When 5G combines with AI and cloud computing, new production scenarios such as live video monitoring, remote diagnostics and on-site prescription would emerge to enable precision agriculture.

For example, geographic and imaging data captured by XAG’s surveying drones would be real-time processed in the cloud, while Agriculture Intelligence (XAI) would immediately analyse those data to generate AI prescription maps on site to achieve the Variable-rate Application (VRA) of the plant protection drones or other automated agri-machineries.

 XAG P Series Plant Protection UAS

During the past six years, XAG has developed fully autonomous plant protection drone to replace physical labour on seeding, fertilising and chemical spraying. This means that a large amount of agricultural production data, including field edges, landforms, object location, crop growth, flight path and spraying dosage, have been accumulated for AI analytics and deep learning.

Besides, the partnership between XAG and Huawei would also step further to elevate the agricultural application of IoT to a new height. With 5G and cloud computing, the growing condition of croplands would be streamed via live videos on mobile phones to improve farmers’ crop management experience and alleviate consumers’ concern on food safety. Farmers could conduct remote crop disease diagnosis more accurately without staying by the fields and sweating all over. And consumers could be well informed by the produce traceability system so that the trust gap between consumer and producer would be closing.

Since 2013, XAG has leveraged its smart agriculture technologies to serve over 4.7 millionfarmers worldwide and conducted precise, cost-effective UAS crop protection on more than 6 million hectares of farmlands. With the deepen cooperation with Huawei, XAG will strive to interconnect all its intelligent devices, including drones, sensors and robots, through 5G, AI and cloud computing to achieve automated agriculture and smart farming.

Soure: XAG

Goanna Ag uses IoT technology for water management on Australian Farms

Goanna Ag launches first-of-its-kind sensors to provide water management visibility for Australian farmers

ADELAIDE, South Australia, Aug. 6, 2019 – Goanna Ag has partnered with Myriota to develop a remote monitoring, low-cost farm sensor solution for Australian farmers. The solution will tackle one of Australian agriculture’s biggest challenges: the management and optimisation of on-farm water use.

Combining Goanna Ag’s deep experience in farm sensors with Myriota’s direct-to-orbit satellite network for the Internet of Things (IoT), the partnership will unlock the power of remote monitoring at a price and scale never seen before.

Making the most of every drop of precious water is a challenge that Australian farmers have been dealing with for decades. This has been compounded by the impact of one of the worst droughts in living memory; with water management being brought into stark view across the farming community this year.

Monitoring rainfall and water storage is a critical requirement to better understand and manage what is going on across the farm. Traditionally, this monitoring has required regular trips to check rain gauges and water tank levels; a necessary evil rather than an efficient and sustainable solution.

In the past decade, remote monitoring has emerged as a far more efficient approach, but the relatively high cost of hardware and communications, complexity of data, less than robust sensors and a lack of field support has prevented widespread adoption.

Partnering with Myriota to develop an ‘everywhere’ monitoring solution for Australian agriculture, GoannaAg has deployed a small number of rain gauges and water tank monitoring devices as part of a trial on Australian farms. Now, the tried and tested solution is on the verge of commercial release with pricing and distribution currently being finalised.

The gauges’ data management and app access provide a more affordable solution than other  alternatives, with units set to include three years of connectivity, data management and app access as standard.

Future iterations of the rain gauges will see Goanna Ag integrate smart functionality, including point specific weather forecasting generated by the Bureau of Meteorology, aggregated and granular rainfall mapping, and an initial on-the-go yield forecaster for dryland cropping.

Tom Dowling Chief Operating Officer at Goanna Ag said that the suite of products has been in development for some time.

“Our clients know the value that comes from remote monitoring, but until now, the industry has been restricted by coverage and cost issues,” Dowling said.

“We have been working toward a solution like this for over a decade, and thanks to our partnership with Myriota, have developed a game changing solution that will drive on farm efficiencies – particularly around water management and optimisation.” Tom Dowling, Chief Operating Officer, Goanna Ag

Business Development Executive at Myriota, Tom Rayner, echoed Goanna Ag’s sentiments, saying that the partnership is already achieving strong results for farmers.

“We are able to provide an ‘everywhere’ communication solution that is ideally suited to agriculture,” Rayner said.

“With ground based communications requiring capital and geographical prioritisation, there will be ‘black spots’ where data is lost, but through this collaboration with Goanna Ag, we have been able to overcome these challenges of cost and connectivity.” Tom Rayner, Business Development Executive, Myriota

Both Myriota and Goanna Ag are in the process of expanding their respective capabilities to deliver more sensors and satellites to solve problems facing the industry where real-time insights are critical.

Goanna Ag is now taking pre-orders for their rain gauge and tank monitoring solutions, with commercial sales set for October this year.

Sourece: Myriota

Cloud-Star Technology Deliver Digi Wireless Routers For IoT Applications

Cloud-Star Technology supply DIGI wireless routers for IoT applications

Delivering Scalable Solutions for What's Next

Cloud-Star Technology supply Digi wireless routers for ESN and IoT deployments.

DIGI wireless routers available from Cloud-Star Technology

Since 1985, Digi International Inc. (Digi) has been a pioneer in wireless communication, forging the future for connected devices and responding to the needs of the people and enterprises that use them.

Before the Internet of Things was a thing, Digi built M2M and IoT devices, adapted to evolving network standards, and optimized data communications around the most advanced protocols and emerging technologies. From radio frequency modems to gateways, cellular routers, networking devices, embedded system-on-modules (SOM) and single-board computers (SBCs), Digi's solutions have continually grown to serve the full breadth of applications across the IoT landscape.

Today, Digi's IoT offering includes sensor-based solutions, a sophisticated platform for remotely monitoring device deployments of any size, anywhere, as well as professional design, implementation and certification teams to help you carry out your vision, no matter how large or small.

Digi Work Where Data Moves

From vast oil fields and evolving cities to intensive care units and factory floors, Digi connect the millions of sensors, valves, and components that allow these critical infrastructures to carry out their tasks. Even in the most demanding environments, Digi provides the essential layer of remote monitoring and management that IoT (Internet of Things) communications depend on.

Our customers are pushing the boundaries of their industries and exploring the possibilities for what’s next. They have innovative ideas, big problems to solve, and aggressive goals. Budgets are tight, deadlines are looming, and their success depends on the ability to make smarter decisions faster. That’s where Digi comes in.

Digi puts proven technology to work for our customers so they can connect complex networks and take new products from ideation to deployment. We bring visions and innovations to life with machine connectivity that’s relentlessly reliable, secure, scalable, and manageable. That’s Digi.

For more information on the Digi range of wireless routers available from Cloud-Star Technology click here>

Source: Digi/Cloud-Star