Smart Farming Solutions by Farmo

The Challenge

Farmo is basing their solutions on real inquiry from real people, farmers that are searching for ways to optimize their farms. Some of the frequently searched solutions include:

Water supply monitoring - In areas where there are problems with water supply, where there are expected failures and potential harm to the animals and crops, monitoring is essential. Accurate data helps with planning and avoiding crises.

When electric fences fail it takes too much time to find faults and fix problems.

It is hard to monitor gates and prevent unauthorized entries on farms.

Farmo is on the ground helping farmers adopt and implement digital technologies. They are continuing to roll out more gateways and more coverage in small-scale deployments that suit the user’s case.

The LoRaWAN gateways must be secure, reliable, and resilient in the toughest conditions. That is why they have chosen the RAK7249 because it has proven to be the best gateway for such use cases in rural Australia.

The sensors

If the sensor exists off-the-shelf, Farmo will resell it, but if there is a use case where the right sensor does not exist, they will invent it. Farmo has two patents filed for inventions including a floating water level sensor (Water Rat) and a Farm Gate Sensor (the only one that works for farm gates). Therefore, at their core, they are a hardware dYesign company. However, you cannot sell the hardware to a customer without coverage so they started to provide coverage as well.

The LoRaWAN coverage

Even though some local councils have invested in LoRaWAN coverage in the region, most farms still require their LoRaWAN gateways and networks. One can see from the photos that locations like machinery sheds with high roofs and 240V power on premise are chosen for deployment of a gateway. With a pole on top for the antenna, these are perfect to place the RAK7249. Australia is fairly large and diverse geographically, so there is not a single coverage technology that is good for all situations. So, a switch between LoraWAN, NB-IoT, and satellite (and sometimes a mix of all three) is needed depending on the size/location/topography of the client’s location.

The dashboard and alerts

Farmo has customized and white-labeled a GUI so that each customer has a dashboard displaying data from their organization’s sensors. The most important part is the alert function that enables customers to control email and SMS alerts based on trigger values and specific times. Aside from the LoRaWAN ones, they also have NB-IoT sensors going through a different server, but it all gets pushed to the single customer dashboard.

This may sound a little different from the business model focusing on "big data". That model has not succeeded in Australia and instead, Farmo decided to focus on small data that solves real problems. This leads to increased uptake and trust in digital technology. Over time, longitudinal data sets are building and customers will have access to their own big data, and the learnings that come from that.

Outcome

The company started out developing technology to address problems on farms and now provides solutions for smart cities and urban businesses as well.

Personalized smart solutions are sure to achieve the goals of particular clients and to meet their needs. Farmo is developing sensors and deploying whole networks of them to ensure stable business growth not only for them but for their clients too, with a thought for the environment.

Providing end-to-end solutions for smart farming is not only a promising business model with a feature, but it is the right way to go.