Smart Ag & Irrigation

SMART AGRICULTURE & IRRIGATION

Smart Agriculture & Irrigation

Gateworks Corporation is a leading supplier of industrial grade ARM based SBCs that can be used to implement high performance agriculture solutions. Many ag and irrigation applications require rugged, industrial temperature rated hardware which is where Gateworks SBCs excel. These SBCs are Made in the USA which result in a high quality and robust product. Gateworks SBCs provide wireless data communications for various agriculture sensors. Monitoring water levels, flow rate, soil moisture, pump status, temperature and sunlight allows for the most efficient, cost-saving farming operation. Remote soil sensor and weather data monitoring to allow farmers to determine optimum irrigation schedules. Agricultural Internet of Things (IoT) will transform the industry to be more efficient with water and cost.

Wireless and Wired Communication

Gateworks SBC’s feature Mini-PCIe expansion slots which allow support of a variety of wireless standards such as Cellular (LTE/CATM1), WiFi, Bluetooth, 802.11ah HaLow, SubGHz, Thread, WiSun, Zigbee LoRa, SigFox and Satellite. The Mini-PCIe slots provide customers with a flexible plug-n-play platform that can be tailored to meet their exact specifications. Different wireless standards support important agriculture requirements, such as mesh and point to point networking.

Single, dual and 6-port Gigabit Ethernet models are available.

Intelligent Machine Learning & Recognition

Gateworks SBCs can act as as platform for certain machine learning applications utilizing things such as a tensor processing unit (TPU) to detect soil and weather abnormalities and patterns. Camera recognition of the crop health and weather can also be implemented through the TPU. The TPU device would interface through one of the high-speed Mini-PCIe slots.

Tractors are also becoming smarter through GPS tracking, communication and automation. Fleets of smart self driving tractors can be dispatched and prepare a field with the touch of a button.

Agriculture and Irrigation Sensors

Sensors play a crucial role in indicating the health of a farming operation. These may include temperature, humidity, PH, flow rate and moisture. Gateworks SBCs include GPIO, USB, CAN, RS232, RS485, SPI and I2C interfaces for connecting local sensors.

Bluetooth Low Energy has become extremely popular for interfacing to sensors wirelessly. This sensor data can then be stored and analyzed locally on the Gateworks SBC or pushed up to a cloud server for more long term storage and heavier analysis.

RFID can also be utilized for tracking and monitoring things such as equipment and assets. A RFID system can typically be integrated with the Gateworks SBC through the Mini-PCIe slot. A common industrial solution can be found through companies such as Impinj.

Flexible Software

All boards support an Open Source Linux OS (Ubuntu, Buildroot) which provides the user with complete access and control of the data and allows the use of any of the large number of cloud providers such as Microsoft Azure and Amazon Web Service (AWS).

An automatically irrigated smart-farm.

Flexible Configurations

Gateworks can also provide customers with a “Special” configuration of our standard products. This “Special” program allows customers to create cost and feature optimized versions of our standard products for their agriculture operation. The special is assigned a unique, revision locked, part number so customers can be insured they receive the same exact configuration every time they order. Note there is a 100-piece minimum order quantity for special configuration models. Some of the items that can be configured under the “Specials” program are:

  • Changing components such as DRAM size, Flash size, or CPU type/speed
  • Removing components not used to lower the cost of the product
  • Adding optional components designed into the product but not loaded on the standard version (ie. locking headers)
  • Programming the customer firmware

For high volume applications, Gateworks can also design a full custom SBC to meet the customer exact needs. Contact sales@gateworks.com for more information and to discuss your exact needs.

Recommended products for Agriculture Applications

Recommended Single Board Computers:

  • Venice GW7100 – Small 35mm x 100mm, 1x Mini-PCIe sites, 1x GbE, i.MX8M Mini Quad Core CPU
  • Venice GW7200 – Small 70mm x 100mm, 2x Mini-PCIe sites, 2x GbE, i.MX8M Mini Quad Core CPU
  • Venice GW7300 – 105mm x 100mm, 3x Mini-PCIe sites, 2x GbE, i.MX8M Mini Quad Core CPU
  • Venice GW7400 – 140mm x 100mm, 3x Mini-PCIe sites, 6x GbE, i.MX8M Plus Quad Core CPU
  • Additional SBCs available in a variety of form factors and with up to 6x Mini-PCIe sites. See here for more information.

Recommended Mini-PCIe Cards for Wireless Support:

Recommended Enclosures: