Telemetry Applications in Agriculture

Another synonym for telematics is telemetry. There is a slight difference. One is more to define the technology, yet other one is more meant to highlight its measuring feature.

Here is a passage about telemetry application in agriculture.

Telemetry Applications in Agriculture

Most activities related to healthy crops and good yields depend on timely availability of weather and soil data. Therefore, wireless weather stations play a major role in disease prevention and precision irrigation. These stations transmit major parameters needed for good decisions to a base station: air temperature and relative humidity, precipitation and leaf wetness (for disease prediction models), solar radiation and wind speed (to calculate evapotranspiration), and sometimes also soil moisture, crucial to understand the progress of water into soil and roots for irrigation decisions.

Because local micro-climates can vary significantly, such data needs to come from right within the crop. Monitoring stations usually transmit data back by terrestrial radio though occasionally satellite systems are used. Solar power is often employed to make the station independent from local infrastructure.

Evapotranspiration (ET) is a term used to describe the sum of evaporation and plant transpiration from the Earth's land surface to atmosphere. Evaporation accounts for the movement of water to the air from sources such as the soil, canopy interception, and waterbodies. Transpiration accounts for the movement of water within a plant and the subsequent loss of water as vapor through stomata in its leaves. Evapotranspiration is an important part of the water cycle. An element (such as a tree) that contributes to evapotranspiration can be called an evapotranspirator.

Source: wikipedia



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I do not mean to promote someone's product. But the overview videos of farming/agriculture telemetry system is quite enlightening about what we have discussed so far.

Real application of agriculture telemetry.

Please enjoy them:

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You may find and interesting research relevant to the topic:

Title: Infrared telemetry for agricultural applications.
Personal Authors: Feuer, L.
Author Affiliation: Automata, Inc., Grass Valley, CA, USA.
Editors: No editors
Document Title: Agri-Mation 2. Proceedings of the Conference, Chicago, March 3-5, 1986. ASAE Publication 01-86.

Abstract:

Communication aspects and system design for IR telemetry are considered. Power requirements for various communication speeds (band rate), and choice of wavelength are examined. A closed loop system configuration is desirable in agricultural applications. Other features reducing communications failure are on-site data storage and local field station control algorithms. Physical equipment considerations, such as ease of equipment installation, and removal during harvesting operations or planting are also discussed. Advice is given on the selection of telemetry equipment.

Publisher: American Society of Agricultural Engineers