Regardless of the differences in their crops, environment, relative business size or region, we’ve seen that some grower concerns are near universal: “there aren’t enough hours in the day” is certainly one of them. “I can’t be in two (or three, or four) places at once” is another.

It just so happens that the ZENSIE dashboard makes it easy to monitor and analyze your crops’ needs across locations, from any device, wherever you might be. But we’ve yet to sort out teleportation, so like our customers, sometimes we find ourselves wishing we could be in more places at once. That’s where our distributors come in.

This week, one of those places is Niagara Falls, for the Canadian Greenhouse Conference (October 3rd through 4th at the Scotiabank Convention Center, to be exact). Growers, suppliers and researchers will be coming together to discuss innovation in commercial greenhouse flower, vegetable, cannabis, berry and nursery growing, and while we won’t be there ourselves, our technology will be.

Our North American distributors, Hort Americas, will be at the Canadian Greenhouse Conference– find them, and our tech, at booth #1206. If you’ve got any questions, or would like to set up a chat and demo beforehand, let us know. We’ll be glad to connect you.

A few weeks ago, we spoke to horticultural consultant Chris Need about the role real-time data plays in helping growers prevent disease (in this specific case pansy mottle syndrome), and discussed how remote monitoring of plants and their environment can help drive more informed, immediate decision-making.

A few weeks (and a new product update) on, we’ve checked in again.

On the agenda this time: data as common ground for collaboration and innovation across teams and departments.

Now that you’re working with a crop data platform with your customers, what impact have you seen?

For communication between myself and the customer, the 30MHz platform has worked brilliantly. We see historical context, the current status of plants, and can make confident decisions based on a combination of live data and an understanding of what’s been going on previously. We’ve been able to take preventative measures to avoid disease in crops, while communicating from anywhere in the world.

I’m really enthusiastic for the opportunities for collaboration and data exchange that groups and comments offer customers as well. I see some growers taking the next step and forming interdisciplinary project groups within the nursery. These groups features— the ability to share sensor data with any stakeholder, and have an ongoing conversation about that live data– are powerful, so I’d like to see more of them!

Take the example of two growers I’m working with: one grows small plants, and then hands them over to the other. There’s no competition here. The growers work in separate buildings, at separate nurseries, and operatrate reasonably separately, but they’re part of the same chain— same ecosystem. And they happen to share the same overall management. A mutual understanding of the plants’ experience as they move from one stage to the next would be of great benefit to both growers, not to mention the plants themselves.

So how do growers move to this next level of digital collaboration?

(Well, they need to just log into the dashboard!)

In horticulture, everyone’s busy. And management at the top needs to see the impact on productivity and margins. Everyone wants innovation, but these organisations want to run as efficiently as possible— there isn’t a great deal of time for “free play.” That’s what makes 30MHz such a great fit: it’s easy to deploy and use, and the benefits are evident very quickly. It’s not risky for the business. That’s why it’s such a massive opportunity.

Working together to create horticultural strategies based on real, live data has tangible benefits. Even in extreme conditions— one of the hottest summers the UK has seen in years— we managed to produce a number of batches with no signs of pansy mottle syndrome (PaMS.) We looked at plant stress, environmental conditions, and took action. Screen settings and irrigation timings were manipulated to reduce leaf and air temperatures and reduce VPD peaks. 30MHz tech allowed us to go beyond a traditional approach of just looking at the environment— we could actually monitor the plants themselves and identify and minimise stress, something you wouldn’t spot using other tools.

At one point, something went wrong: very strong winds (over 15 m/s) led the climate computer to shut the vents based on thresholds set to prevent weather damage. High radiation and closed vents raised the temperature and VPD dramatically. Two weeks later, we saw that PaMS had developed. From my point of view, this experience confirmed that we had been taking the right approach to prevent pansy mottle syndrome to begin with. And if we didn’t take this approach, we would see the problem. We now have evidence to back our approach: we know we need to focus on what we need to control stress, and we see that if we don’t control those factors, we’ll have a negative result, with a delay of about two weeks. (We also know that changing wind speed settings will be able prevent this occurring in the future.)

So, we’ve already seen some great results, but granular real-time monitoring like this can have an impact in so many other areas of horticulture. There are real opportunities to leverage this kind of data to push forward on the R&D front— particularly in nurseries.

Traditionally, R&D is done in research stations, so there isn’t really access to commercial conditions. There aren’t opportunities to manipulate the environment or the plants the same day— technology like 30MHz closes this gap. I’ve seen pansy mottle trials with traditional data logging, where data was solely historic, and nothing could be improved in real-time. The environment simply couldn’t be manipulated quickly or effectively. What we’re doing at Newey Roundstone is the next step. The potential for responsive R&D in real, changing and changeable conditions is absolutely massive. I can’t wait to see the innovation that will come from collaborative, interdisciplinary collaboration based on live data. And it’s all possible in this platform.

Follow Chris’ views on the horticultural industry via LinkedIn, or contact him chris@needconsulting.co.uk

There’s nothing 9 to 5 about agriculture.

The sun keeps rising and setting, temperatures fluctuate, humidity varies, pests and diseases develop. Crops don’t stop needing care on weekends, holidays or after hours. Capturing metrics from remotely placed sensors (anywhere in the world), the ZENSIE platform’s there to keep tabs on your crops in real-time, and (based on rules you set) get in touch with you and/or your colleagues when action needs to be taken. And with new updates to make it even more mobile-friendly, we’re making sure you’re informed on the state of your crops, and confident making decisions— whatever the time, wherever you are.

“I can’t be everywhere at once”

Usually, when we hear about “global agriculture”– we hear about the challenges it’s facing. “Global” hunger, “global” overpopulation, “global” pressures on land and productivity. But what about the solutions?

Just looking at our customer base, we see the interconnected, global nature of crop production. Consultants in Italy are remotely monitoring and advising on crops in the Middle East, growers are comparing and learning from multiple facilities— with headquarters in the Netherlands, but greenhouses in Russia, Kenya or the west coast of the United States.

And then there’s the very basic needs to travel on business, or take a holiday. Consultants can stay up-to-date on their customers’ status while out of the country, and agribusiness owners can sleep soundly, knowing that if something out of the ordinary happens, they’ll know immediately.

Physical presence is not only no longer a prerequisite to stay involved with your crops and their needs, but with the new and improved ZENSIE we’re taking it one step further: working with and analyzing data is equally powerful and convenient on the go.

It takes a village

Agriculture is far from insular. From research groups to growers’ organisations, supplier to customer across the chain, and simply neighbour to neighbour— there’s just so much knowledge within this sector. And as growers experiment and adapt every season, the learnings are continuous and cumulative.

Our updates to the ZENSIE platform make the exchange of that knowledge practical, case-based, and tied to real (and real-time) contexts.

With groups and comments, physical proximity never stands in the way of fully-informed decision-making for your crops, or any stakeholder’s ability to participate in the process. If you’ve got your smartphone or tablet (or computer of course), you have access to all the live and historical information on how what your crop has been through, and what condition it’s in. With the ability to drill down data, view comments, and stay on top of ongoing conversations within charts, you also get a full overview of every stakeholder’s opinions and recommendations on how to act.

Closing the feedback loop

Monitor, analyze, confer and act. All possible within ZENSIE, even with remote colleagues across the globe.

When it comes to protecting crops and optimising their production, time is of the essence. The ecosystem of stakeholders needed to ensure crops are fresh, delicious, sustainable and profitable on their journey from farm to fork need the flexibility of a platform that lets them respond to pressing crop needs whenever, wherever. That’s why making real-time crop monitoring and collaboration mobile-friendly is so crucial.

When it comes to optimising user interfaces, sometimes it’s the little things we barely notice that make the biggest impact. A shifted button here, a new search bar there— all designed to make an experience more seamless and intuitive (in this case, on phones and tablets.) You can read about the specific changes we’ve made in this post, but when it comes to updates in the interface, we almost hope you don’t notice.

We’ve just updated the ZENSIE dashboard.

The new groups feature makes it easy to share data from various sources (sensors, climate control, traceability) in its various forms (heatmaps, graphs, visualizations, single values) with individuals within and outside your organisation. Group members can follow sensors, and with live commenting, provide feedback on crop performance based on real-time and historical data on crops and environments anywhere in the world, from anywhere in the world.
From staying aware of changes in real-time, to collaborating on the best way to respond, ZENSIE is your one-stop-shop for optimising your agribusiness’ operations. Not only is it your central point for crop analytics, it’s just become your virtual meeting room.

Maximising agri-data’s value, farm to fork

How’s this for making collaboration interdisciplinary, and across the chain: you don’t need to be part of the same organisation to be members of the same group.

We talk about the chain in agriculture, but let’s be honest, it’s more like an intricate web. It’s farm to fork, but with so many stakeholders on the way. Suppliers, growers, advisors, consultants, cold store managers— the combinations of individuals interacting to solve and prevent problems are endless, and often project-specific. Different organisations and members within them play different roles, depending on the objectives (think optimising integrated pest management, reducing crop disease during cultivation or storage, or designing an irrigation strategy that’s more targeted and sustainable.)

With the ability to selectively invite external (and, of course, internal) members to groups, you can stay focused on a specific task, project, metric, location (you name it.) You set permissions and define which sensor data is shared with the group, so collaboration across roles and organisations is on your terms.

Comments: an ongoing conversation

In groups, you know you’re seeing the same data, and can arrange to receive the same alerts based on custom triggers (setting them up is beyond simple.) And with comments, you can discuss that live and historical data, together. Pinpoint and address specific problems, draw conclusions based on experiments, or simply flag issues others may have missed.

Crop data and the discussion around it shouldn’t be fragmented. We’ve brought it together in one interface, to streamline the conversation. Groups and comments eliminate the fragmentation caused by waiting for emails or meetings to address pressing crop matters. In ZENSIE, the conversation is ongoing, data-driven and annotated. Plus, it can include colleagues wherever they are.

Making groups accessible to individuals outside the organisation creates new channels for meaningful collaboration within the agricultural sector— from research and working groups evaluating crop protection methods, to growers’ organisations sharing tips, feedback mechanisms between customers and suppliers to individual growers with similar problems simply exchanging knowledge, groups might just turn into partnerships, innovation and communities.

We make this point often: we’re a tech company serving agriculture*

*(horitculture, floriculture, vertical farming, arable farming, processing, cold storage, transport, retail)

Our product strategy is in many ways radically simple: make what customers tell us they want and need. This process never stops. If you’ve been with us for a bit, you may recall the release of new calculations in the Pointed Microclimate Sensor, heatmap animations, and alerts-in-charts (all customer-driven.) From hardware to connectivity to the platform, growers have shaped 30MHz tech.

We didn’t start off specifically in agritech, but it was agriculture that understood us, saw our value, worked with us and brought us to where we are. 160+ customers, five continents, and constant room for growth and evolution. Every release, and the development running up to it, is an opportunity to better understand our customers, and the sector that’s embraced us.

So what have we learned?

Well, a lot of things. One of the most notable being just how collaborative agriculture really is. (Perhaps that’s one of the reasons this sector has been such a good fit for us. It’s all about collaboration. And with our tech roots, so are we).

Farm to fork, agriculture is evidence-based and data driven, making decisions together with a whole range of stakeholders, and experimenting with and testing new methods in an ongoing conversation. From consultants, to growers, irrigation specialists to cold store operators, getting crops from seeds to customers involves continuous communication. And while the importance of “being in the greenhouse” won’t be automated away anytime soon, that dialogue is increasingly virtual and remote, between individuals in different parts of the world.

Here’s what customers are saying:

“I can trust the information from anywhere in the world on my iPhone. Sometimes I cannot sleep and I will check my phone to make sure that my plants are doing okay. I feel more confident in my decisions and I am already saving money everyday through the usage of the 30MHz solution.”– E.K. Tan, Director of Wengfong Nurseries

“Not only are we capturing metrics we previously couldn’t, on a continuous basis, I can keep an eye on the plants’ response remotely, wherever I am. I could monitor Newey Roundstone’s plants while in France last week. I knew the weather was hot, so I could just check the dashboard and see how the plants responded. It works fantastically.”   -Chris Need, Horticultural Consultant

We’re constantly working to make it easier for teams to make the most of their crop-level data. Not only are we making it simple and intuitive to compare and act on data from various sources in a single platform, we’re augmenting the ability to explore, discuss and act on that data— together, from anywhere.

You might notice us looking a little different…

The summer’s been good to us. If you launch ZENSIE, you’ll see a different user interface. We’ve made changes to streamline interaction with your data, and your colleagues whether you’re on a desktop, tablet or smartphone, and whether your colleagues are within your organisation or outside of it.

Here’s what we’ve added, and why:

Introducing: groups

You’ve been telling us just how collaborative caring for your crops is, and we’ve been listening. Groups are a new way to work together on specific projects monitoring and responding to crops’ needs. Simply click to ‘add a group’, name it, invite users and set their permissions. Collaborate with colleagues within your company or organisation, and easily add external collaborators.

Add sensors to groups

From the sensors page, you can easily select with sensors are part of your group, thus determining which live data you’ll collaborate on.

Set permissions

Set permissions when inviting members to join groups, or adjust permissions at any time.
Followers can view data and comments, without contributing. Editors can add sensors to the group, create widgets and dashboards and add comments, with no administrative role. Alongside all other capabilities, owners can control roles within the group, control the group name, add new members, and choose to delete groups.

Comments? That’s right, that brings us to…

Introducing: comments

We’ve made your agri-data more interactive, with the ability to add comments on chart values at any moment in time. As you might recall, any widget, whether it’s a single value, a heatmap or image can be viewed as an interactive chart with a single click. Once in the chart, all chart-widget capabilities apply, including the ability to add more sensors, and view different time-periods.

To add a comment, hover over your chart. Click on where you’d like to add a comment. If there are multiple sensor data points on that spot in the chart, you’ll see a drop down menu. Select the sensor you want to comment on, and add your notes. You’ll see all comments below the chart, with the option to reply to existing notes.

Dashboard tabs are on your left

To make going between dashboard tabs easier, we’ve moved them from the top of your screen to your left for clearer navigation on any device. Create and share dashboards here.

Add widgets on the top right

Remember the “add widgets” button on your bottom right? We’ve moved it to the top for mobile-friendliness.

Share dashboards on the top right

As you know, we’ve made dashboards shareable. Simply click share, fill out an email address, and select permissions to share your charts and visualisations— now on the top right for easier mobile access.

Improved search

Search used to be just for finding sensors. No longer— use the search menu (on your upper right) to find dashboards quickly and easily.

This is just the beginning

We’ll be releasing more updates to the platform so, as they say, watch this space.

In the meantime, if you’ve got questions, concerns, or ideas to share, get in touch!

It may go against “sales logic,” but we usually advise customers to start with small deployments. It’s not because we can’t handle large ones (one gateway can support around 4 thousand sensors– and if more are needed, it just takes another gateway) but because working with crop-level insights is a process.

It becomes a part of how growers, consultants, irrigation specialists, cold store managers, etc. make decisions, plan resources, and communicate with one another.

There’s no magic formula to how many sensors a grower of X crop needs in a Y by Z sized facility. Growers have varying objectives, differing circumstances, and let’s be honest, differing budgets.

Is ‘big data’ the solution?

A quick scan of the internet would likely lead anyone to conclude that they need thousands upon thousands of data points– big data! huge data!– to make any meaningful decisions for their agribusiness.

Of course, many data points are great. The more data at your disposal, the more likely you are to notice something you weren’t even looking for: an opportunity to cut costs, conserve resources, prevent crop damage etc.

But if you’re strategic with your priorities, you can make a difference with much, much less.

Go for the low-hanging fruit

Forgive the pun, but we go on about this concept for a reason. Real-time monitoring can deliver quick wins in the short-term, while helping shape growers’ strategy across seasons.

The image is a customer’s heatmap in the 30MHz dashboard. With just three VWC sensors, this grower was able to identify and respond to an irrigation issue, quickly and efficiently.

Faulty irrigation can be costly to growers – water is expensive (not to mention Europe has been experiencing drought!), and the impact on plants can be damaging.

Easily visible changes (all with optional SMS or email alerts) in moisture levels quickly showed the customer that an irrigation pipe was overwatering on one end, while underwatering on another. The uneven distribution of water was due to a blockage- quickly remedied thanks to real-time data.

Data doesn’t have to be “big” to be powerful.

Technology in horticulture doesn’t have to be difficult or complicated. We’ve built a business around this belief, and it’s not just for the sake of improving or ‘disrupting’ existing technology. Growers need technology to be simple and streamlined, because they’ve got more than enough on their plates, working to make sure we’ve got enough on ours.

Still, when we talk about technology, we tend to use shorthand. We’ve used “smart sensing tech” to explain the hardware, network, and cloud platform we provide our customers with to monitor the real-time state of their crops and environment. As with any conversation, as we talk to our customers and potential customers, we learn how to better express ourselves, and better explain the technology we’re developing.

Metrics, not sensors

30MHz technology is about a great deal more than just sensors: it’s about scalable, reliable architecture, flawless connectivity, and usable crop-level analytics that help teams work together to make the best decisions for their businesses, farm to fork.

Nevertheless, in our early days, we’d often find ourselves in conversations with (potential) customers trying to understand which sensors they wanted. That ended quickly. The difference may feel negligible to some, but it’s really not about which sensors a grower needs. It’s about the insights they need, metrics they want to capture.

Multiple metrics, one sensor

Developed with input from growers, the pointed microclimate sensor can capture plant temperature of individual crops, ambient temperature and relative humidity (RH). Luckily for growers, we’re not just a sensor company.

The 30MHz platform is designed to make the most of customers’ hortidata. With the data captured by the pointed microclimate sensor, calculations in the cloud can provide insights on dew point, absolute humidity (AH), humidity deficit and the absolute difference between air temperature and dewpoint.

Multiple metrics, one sensor. That’s the power of a cloud platform. (And we’re adding new calculations, based on customer needs).

PMC sensor specifications

Crop metrics

Our customers can see their crop metrics in various forms, including:

Alerts

Graphs

Heatmaps

Customers can also benchmark and compare metrics, set in-graph targets, and view data in context with external data sources like climate control, traceability and shelf-life. Discover all the features of the 30MHz platform.

30MHz Sensor Catalogue

Are you curious about which variables we can map and which sensors are available?

Download the 30MHz Sensor Catalogue

It’s that time of year again: August 22nd through 24th, 30MHz will be in Bangkok for Horti Asia 2018, the international trade show for horticultural and floricultural production and processing technology.

We’ll be showcasing ZENSIE, the platform for agridata, as well as some of the agri-oriented sensors from our portfolio.

Besides demoing our tech, we’ll probably want to tell you about some of the results we’ve seen with agricultural customers (we have over 160). These include:

• 5-10% reduction in energy costs across large scale greenhouses by monitoring temperatures at extremities of greenhouse and maintaining more constant temperatures
• A fruit storage customer immediately identified overnight malfunctions in their cold stores, which was leading to significant and unnecessary product loss
• Flower grower significantly reducing mildew (and so boosting production) by maintaining humidity levels below 80%
• Pepper growers reduce production losses from skin damage by 2-3% by monitoring surface temperature. ROI > 1000% payment. 1-2mth payback
• Plant breeder paid for investment within 2mths by almost completely eliminating pesticide use by using our pointed microclimate sensor (keeping conditions below the point where pests propagate)
• UK packhouse saving manual labour time and costs (and diverting to more productive uses) by replacing manual data collection with real time sensors. 100%+ ROI

30MHz tech is well suited for a range of agricultural contexts, from greenhouse to vertical and arable, storage and processing to transport and retail. Read more about our tech at work in Asia with customers like Wengfong Nurseries and Magic Season Farms, and of course, feel free to ask us anything. See you in Thailand!

In the world of produce, temperature is critical.
Awareness of temperature changes can be the difference between a quality product, and a heat-damaged one. The implications run deep: health and safety, profits and supplier reputation are all on the line– and supermarket demand for quality produce is only increasing.

With the right data, agribusinesses can make informed decisions about which products to consume early in a production cycle, and which to leave in stock to make sure the very best products reach customers at the right time.

With granular real-time data from 30MHz, the Consus Fresh Produce Temperature Protection System makes it easy to remotely view the temperature status of any pallet, and set custom proactive notifications to monitor shelf life, and know when a product is at risk.

Want to know more about our work with Consus Fresh? Get in touch below.

Want to know more about data integrations with our API? Take a look here.

We recently combined the power of charts and notifications to make the parameters of custom alerts visible in chart widgets, making it easy for customers to observe when crop or environmental measurements triggered notifications.*

*(And allowing them to to continue to watch them do so in real-time)

But there’s another useful application of the notifications-in-charts feature.

One of our customers is using custom notification settings to visualize daily targets in their dashboard.

Just another example of innovation within the (highly customisable) ZENSIE platform.