- In cooperation with the regional office for agriculture Hessen and peerOS, the IOTA Foundation has announced a project to research the use of tangle technology in horticulture and agriculture
- In the context of a first test bed, possible applications and feasibility will be investigated.
IOTA co-founder Dominik Schiener presented another local and IOTA based project from Germany. Via Twitter Schiener wrote that the regional office for agriculture Hessen, the IOTA Foundation and peerOS have been working on the cooperation project “iotAgrar” since May 1st. The project is evaluating new ways of implementing the transmission and processing of sensor data in horticulture and agriculture, as Schiener explained:
Really amazing to see the ecosystem around IOTA push its adoption. This project in Germany operated by the LLH Hessen and peerOS will soon go into a testbed atUniversity of Geisenheim. Perfect timing with Chrysalis on the horizon.
The project focuses on the IOTA Tangle technology and its use for decentralized data storage via the Internet of Things. Currently, a test installation based on a water meter with GPS module and pressure sensor is being set up at the Geisenheim University of Applied Sciences. In addition to exploring possible further applications, the test bed will be used to show how digital water meters together with the Tangle can be used to ensure efficient irrigation.
The first application will be the real-time visualization of the data via the GeoBox viewer, according to the official announcement:
On a module developed by peerOs, the sensor data determined are encoded into the IOTA protocol and portioned into the necessary data size. These data packets are then sent via LoRa radio to an LTE gateway and from there written to the DLT platform (Tangle). From this Tangle, which is to be understood as a standardised data interface, the real-time visualisation of the data is then realised via the GeoBox viewer.
Recalling the water consumption of irrigation systems in real time has significant advantages over analogue water meters, which are only evaluated at the end of the season. The technology enables an early reaction to the exceeding of allocated water rights.
In addition, only the exact collection of the given water quantity makes it possible to calculate the climatic water balance and thus the efficient use of the resource water. By integrating the pressure sensor developed by peerOS, farmers are able to collect real-time information about pressure conditions in the pipeline system.
This information could be used to weigh up whether it makes sense in terms of performance to start another irrigation. This could prevent the pumps integrated in the pipe system from running outside their optimal range of action, thus making irrigation energetically inefficient. By combining the water meter with a GPS module, it is possible to allocate the measured water consumption specifically to the respective crops and thus create a product-related water footprint.
According to the announcement, the project is initially scheduled to run until January 31, 2021, and will serve as a demonstration object for consulting, education and research. In addition, the knowledge gained is also intended be the basis for further developments in the field of transmission and processing of sensor data for horticulture and agriculture.
