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4-Feb-2008 A long gap between announcements, reflecting the fact that the network has been operating generally very well. There were a couple of interuptions that appear to have been due to overheating of the server, but with a little more ventilation, that problem has resolved and we have been getting an uninterupted set of data from all the sensor nodes.
The time has come for harvest and we have spent several days taking measurements of the diameter of every piece of fruit on the 76 trees that are being monitored. With some 150 nectarines on each tree, this was a big task. Selected fruit on each tree are also being monitored for ripeness by Near Infrared spectrophotometry, and sample fruit being taken for further analysis. The next phase following the harvest will be characterised by the cessation of irrigation, and, we expect, a significant decrease in soil moisture.
A soil moisture node surrounded by ripe nectarines
20-Sept-2007 Just a short item to note that we have started to monitor our sensor network using alerts that are automatically transmitted to a mobile phone by SMS. The basic functionality is built into Crossbow's MoteView, and we are using SMSglobal.com.au as an SMS service provider. Currently, the Orchard Network is sending a "health" SMS daily, simply to let us know the system is operational.
10-Sept-2007 We hosted Peter Tsepeleff, the CEO of Grape Networks as part of his visit to Melbourne for COMMS 2007. Peter gave an illuminating talk at the conference, and at the Tatura site. He was happy to compare size metrics for our "big" networks. The tweaking of the network continues as the trees begin to blossom. Rainfall has been incredibly low this year again, which will not have helped "bed" the soil moisture sensors. The instrumenting of the focus nodes with trunk diameter sensors is partially completed and the weather station instrumentation deployed.
Focus tree nodes in spring - two soil moisture nodes and trunk diameter and canopy temperature node.
08-Aug-2007 DPI Victoria has the World's largest Agricultural Wireless Sensor Network
At least by some criteria. A recent press release by Grape Networks stated that their 50 acre, 200+ sensor deployment was “the World’s largest Wireless Sensor Network for agriculture”. We certainly do not cover 50 acres, more like three acres, but we have 47 nodes and 273 sensors with more to come. So largest by number, and certainly the densest. Our challenge is now to make this site as useful as that developed by Grape Networks, which has high connectivity to the Internet, and is backed by sophisticated data analysis.
Our network is based on Crossbow Inc motes and sensorboards and supported by their MoteWorks sensor network platform software. Our sensors include soil moisture, soil and air temperature, canopy temperature, humidity, leaf wetness, trunk diameter, wind speed and direction, solar radiation and GPS co-ordinates.
Location of Soil Moisture sensor nodes in Tatura nectarine orchard
01-Aug-2007 Deployment of TreeNet has been underway for the last two weeks. No pictures from last week, too wet and cold. Nearly all the soil moisture nodes are up and running as is the weather station. So about 86 sites in the nectarine orchard are being sensed at three depths (20, 40 and 90 cm) for soil moisture every 30 min.
TreeNet Soil Moisture sensor node freshly deployed
19-July-2007 The custom boards designed by Brett have been populated with components, and battery packs added. No conservatism here - two sets of three D cells for the motes, and a 9V battery for the SMX soil moisture board. In total, there will be 43 of these nodes deployed. Most of them are here under test. Every one worked perfectly.
Soil Moisture sensor nodes under test
04-May-2007 We've begun final fabrication of the orchard soil moisture nodes. The first fully worked sensor circuit boars have been produced. Brett's board has the Mica2Dot at the top, the SMX soil mosture sensor excitation board below and the two multiplexers to control the energising of the sensors at the bottom.
22-March-2007 A weather station consisting of temperature, humidity, rainfall, wind speed and wind direction sensors has been placed out in the orchard.
8-March-2007 Bretts new soil moisture sensors 'Prototype 4' were deployed at the Orchard. This new prototype is multiplexed, using a single excitation chip to take the readings from the six sensors sequentially. The 'old' prototype read the sensors simultaneously, which gave inaccurate results. Trunk diameter, canopy temperature and leaf wetness sensors were also placed out in the field.
View of Prototype 4 Soil Moisture Sensor node
22-Nov-06 We have begun the deployment of a pilot network at our orchard site. Sensor nodes carry two sets of three gypsum soil moisture sensors that are buried at 20, 40 and 90 cm depth. Four nodes have been deployed so eight trees are being monitored. We are using Moteview to manage the network and are accessing the network remotely using a VPN connection over the Telstra 3G network with a CDM 823 CDMA router as the gateway.
Prototype sensor node deployed in nectarine orchard. Detail of sensor node in the inset.
11-JUL-06 We've made our first field deployment ! Here's a photo to show (we hope) that "from the tiny acorn doth grow the mighty oak"
433MHz Mica2Dot mote attached atop two D cell batteries by elastic band.
