How To Benefit From IoT In Agriculture? Precision Agri-Tech From OKdo & Arduino PRO - Webinar

I'm joined today by some guest speakers Andrea richetta and and Robert Woods Robert joins us from Agri and he has spent his career in agriculture specializing in crop protection farm machinery and Animal Health and has consulted and provided expertise to many large companies in the agriculture industry Robert's a global citizen originally from Australia but Robert has spent time working for a large dairy equipment company in the U.S and actually now resides in the UK it's fantastic to have you with us today Robert I'm also joined by Andrea richetta head of Pro customer success at Arduino and as we know is a long time partner of ok do and Andrea has been with the Arduino business since 2014 and has helped manage multiple projects around the Arduino product strategy has helped develop the Arduino Pro business and is now in the driving force of arduino's customer success um Arduino is known for educational technology for technology that is deployed into innovators and startups but the Arduino Pro technology is the latest Innovation from Arduino and I'm delighted that Andrea can be with us today to share more with with everybody on this call about the about the Arduino strategy and Technology before we hand over to uh to Robert I just wanted to take a few minutes to introduce OK do and OK do is a global technology business founded in 2019 and we sit proudly as part of the RS group RS group is a global Electronics distributor part of The ftse 100 and has operations in almost every country around the world but okay do you specifically he's born out of single board Computing technology we as a business are a team of Engineers working with customers uh across Azure Pacific Europe and North America deploying uh off-the-shelf Solutions products from our partners but also a range of services as well we carry deep inventory to help our customers in different industry segments and we have a broad range of Partners which I'll share a little bit more about that later on so at the heart sat within the RS group okay do is a world-class distributor we distribute products into countries and customers all around the world but the value that we bring as a as a company as a technology company spans much further than that we're now working with startups smes oems and different industrial customers offering Design Services Manufacturing Services and we're engaging customers through our Global Community design spark which has 1.2 million members and we're helping scale our technology from our partners into a multitude of different Industries agriculture being one of them and if we move just to the next slide I'm now going to hand over to Robert and Robert is going to help talk to us about Precision Agriculture and the experience that he has had there so Robert I hope you can hear me I hope the tech is uh is working and I'll hand the floor to you thank you thank you Richard I uh I'm sure the Tech's working because I can certainly see you and I can hear you I've put together today some slides regarding Precision agriculture but most importantly Precision farming now farming relates to crop production agriculture relates to the whole of the industry just a little bit of background years ago one of the first I'm going to say introductions for technology utilizing say the internet and or satellite was the introduction of GPS for tractors and or farm machinery and GPS really meant like a farm a guidance system for cars it really allowed Farmers to drive their tractors and the satellites guided them accordingly now that's going back 25 30 years since then there's been an explosion of internet-based Technology as well as smartphones PC computers etc so why have all these changes happened and what are some of the challenges in running a farm and how can these changes be adopted by Farmers so look at a couple of thoughts that I have here firstly the Big Challenge farmers face these days is weather climate change is real and it's affecting farming in a big way I've seen statistics and information to show that not only temperatures are changing temperatures are going up in a lot of cases which if you're growing crops such as fruit that needs a chill factor that is causing issues but most importantly rainfall is changing and the variability around rainfall when it rains how much it rains when it starts to rain in in countries where you have what you call a seasonal break versus a time where the rainfall stops and then Harvest can occur that is occurring in a big number of countries that is affecting crop growth in particular Farm inputs now Farm inputs are all the things that farmers will buy to grow and or manage their crop costs continue to rise buying these Farm inputs is a critical part of farming these days farmers are also price takers when they sell their product they've got very little control over the prices that they receive because grains essentially are traded and traded internationally and in many cases traded in US dollars so fluctuations occur associated with with commodity prices based on US Dollars and exchange rates water I've put down water availability in my opinion in the future will be the new oil if you take the agricultural Market in California 80 percent of the water that is used there goes into agriculture when there is drought or when there's issues with water being channeled to population centers in big cities Farmers start to lose out not only in availability but also the price of the water so efficiency and water usage is really important and lastly but no means lease least there is pressure on land for farming due to the expansion of city or urban areas and increasing populations and often the best land is gobbled up around cities or towns and we're seeing further challenges not in an event not only an availability of land but also in the price Farmers have to pay when they want to expand their farm and buy opposing or Farmers or that are surrounding their Farm or even in other areas if they want to expand their operation so let's look at Farm costs because this is really where internet and Technology associated with all sorts of I'm going to call it devices can help in terms of profitably growing crops firstly what are some of the inputs that farmers need well in growing a crop you need fertilizer you need seed you need chemicals be it insecticides or herbicides or fungicides you need fuel you need electricity and you'll notice I put a comma there because the comma I believe at the moment with interest rates Rising farmers are going to be squeezed somewhat in some cases associated with debt repayments so there are always these sorts of things that they need to consider what is the amount of fertilizer what's the type of fertilizer what's the seed they should use what's the chemicals they need for weed control for insect control etc etc on it goes labor labor is a big issue you've got two sorts of Labor you've got labor that is there for permanent Farm Workers such as family members who work on the farm and bearing in mind that most Farms these days are Family Farms but you've also got what I'm going to call a seasonal labor force and that is not only declining in terms of numbers but also there's there's need in a lot of these cases to pay these people more but you've also got what I call succession planning where Farms are then sold to other family members or family members buy out their other family members so there's a debt issue going on there and Farms need to be then liquid associated with being able to service their debt and pay out family family members Machinery to grow a crop to run a cropping operation you need tractors spraying equipment harvesting equipment tillage machinery sewing Etc all cost and all expensive and need to be factored in terms of How It's run and how it's managed and how it's paid for last but no means least again is transport and storage grain storage on Farm or be it off farm and transport to Market is also something that farmers need to cost into the structure of growing of growing a crop and running a farm so the next slide will show you what is precision Farming Farming is growing a crop and what does precision farming mean well a definition I found is improving crop yields and assisting management decisions using high technology sensors and Analysis tools if you distill that and you look at the most important points it's generating information to improve decision making and most importantly improve profitability which means then when you look at the left hand side of the screen there sustainable farming sustainable farming means that the crop or the farm will continue to pay pass from generation to generation so what are the impacts on the farming industry of utilizing these different tools that are essentially internet based what are the impact is the impact on running the farm and a an efficiently and effectively helping the farmer make decisions firstly product usage a reduction in the amount of chemical that they use and or fertilizer that they use it's a cost saving issue but most importantly the farmers utilizing this sort of Technology apply the chemical or the fertilizer where it's needed in the past what used to happen was that the whole crop would be either sprayed or provided with fertilizer across all the land area totally inefficient now and totally not necessarily next point is go back one slide if you could please identification of Key signs in the crop what I mean by Key signs if there's a crop stress that's coming or or starting to occur in certain parts of the field due to say insect problems or nutrient deficiencies in the soil these can be identified early before they become a major issue or in a situation where an insect outbreak can occur that devastates the whole of the crop so these signs can be then identified and then acted upon early not only do you use less chemical or less product in terms of fertilizer but most importantly you treat the problem where it's occurring as opposed to again the whole of the crop the last point there is that yield increases is the ultimate aim but looking at all this information around product usage and identification of signs etc etc provides the best growing opportunities therefore provides the best profit and one of the other key points here is that farmers in some of the technology that they use can adjust then these seeding rates in other words the amount of seed that they use they sow at the time in one Paddock and also adjust the types of seed that they use across that Paddock so they can use different varieties according to the growing conditions so it's really quite a complex scenario but the technology that farmers can use now really helps to identify what these issues are and really helps them grow crops efficiently this last slide while it looks a little bit busy and there's lots of different points here can be broken down into a couple of things if we look on the right hand side and we look at data processing and analyze and yield weeds and topography and prescription Maps what that really shows to the farmer is what they should be doing when and who and how that is the if you like The Guiding Light associated with what they should be doing the data that they're going to show there could be soil type could be moisture profiles could be weed profiles could be insect issues and also then that data can be then put into the various technologies that they have associated with fertilizing planting or spraying and that information then is absolutely where it comes down to Precision farming you're putting the seed the chemical the fertilizer where it's needed and where it's going to provide the most I'm going to say bang for buck or bang for pound regardless of where you are but the most economical return right up the top there we've got a little green person walking around scouting as I mentioned earlier we have a situation where this technology can provide information so the farmer then can act according to what's the best time date place to then provide extra fertilizer or a dress pests Etc right at the very top this is the proof of the pudding this is the success of all this process the Harvest then shows at the end of the season what the success has been the yields in tons per hectare per acre Etc of the different crop most importantly that data goes into the data processing scenario that can be used for the next year and the next year so the farmer builds up a bank of information that they can use alongside their agronomists and their technical advisors to then continue to improve their farming production so there's a range of different satellite-based tools that may out there there can be drones the GPS systems smartphones apps software technology there's a whole range of things to be using this is all what Precision farming is all about okay so I'm happy to answer any questions at this point but if there aren't any questions we can go back to you Richard thank you Robert what what an insightful presentation thank you so much for uh for sharing that with us um I I have so many questions but I'd like to uh just let the the audience know now that we will take a live q a so again if you see uh in the chat box you can type your questions there I will be able to see them coming through and field them to to either myself Robert or Andrea if better suited but I think Robert I think what I wanted to say to you whilst people are thinking of their questions is welcome to the UK I hope you're a climatized uh I don't know did you come directly from the US or from Australia Robert no from the U.S Richard I've only been here five weeks actually so um looking around for a permanent job as such I'm I'm actually born here so I've got a dual passport so you know but Agriculture and the sort of things that I've been doing um you know a lot of what I've been talking about here is international all these challenges are faced by Farmers regardless of where they are regardless of the size and the type of operation so you know whatever that we can do to improve and assist that ensures that agriculture continues to be a vital part of every country's economic production as such or economic scenarios yeah absolutely and I I admitted from my introduction uh Robert that actually I live in the north of England what we call the Yorkshire Dales I'm sure you're aware but lots of grazing livestock cereal farms and famously dry stone walls so I hope your next step takes you up to Yorkshire at some point but we do have questions coming in now and so let me let me just pull out a few what I will say to everybody on the call if we don't get to your questions don't worry we will answer them offline and make sure that we we provide feedback so um we'll start here Rob I've got a question from Jacob um can you share and discuss any potential downsides or risks associated with using Precision Precision Automation in agriculture and how can those risks be mitigated look I I think the the scenario here is is misinterpreting the information that you're receiving and typically Farmers don't necessarily make all these decisions themselves they always rely on what I'm going to call Farm um agronomists or those sort of technical advisors so how do you how do you mitigate the risk you then have an agronomist who helps you through the process okay you've got a certain weed species that's that's the issue is it resistant to certain herbicides what are the herbicides that you use what are the rates that you use so again it's not only looking at that and sharing that information but it's also going back in time and looking at the data and what you've done in previous years and saying hey this worked in the past this will now work in the future or you've got a real issue get your agronomists or technical advisor to come up with other ways of managing these scenarios yeah brilliant brilliant answer and a lot to think about there I have another question uh from poppy um it's a question actually that we've seen many different industry segments that we work in but many rural communities are afraid of Robotics any advice in your experience around the world um Robert I think that comes back to the fact of um labor and one of the issues that was faced in the dairy industry was is labor and reliable labor um and there is robotic milking systems now where the cows literally walk in and they get milked um no one has to touch the cow and the cow actually becomes quite used to this sort of scenario so I I think it's a situation where um farmers will then work alongside the different companies that provide those sort of products and I won't suggest that the whole operation will go robotic at one time because not every Farm is same so the advice I'd give is that then robotics will take over slowly but probably targeted according to the crop or the product that you're growing or the animal or livestock that you're running brilliant yeah um yeah we're now we're being flooded with brilliant questions now Robert um you've really caught uh and spiked everybody's interest I I've got a great one here from Tom um he's asked about um you know what what would you say is the general uptake of tech skills uh in the agricultural sector you know is there an expectation that there'll be uh more training more development in this space as more Technologies come through to to help optimize some of the things that you talked about Tom that's a we could spend an hour talking about that um let's distill that what would you say is the general uptake of tech skills if I to I used the GPS tractor analogy in the beginning in the beginning people were skeptical everybody now has a GPS tractor and now it's moved on to self-driven tractors that that farmers don't even have to get into so that's changed and and I will say this there's attitudes that Drive Farmers and one of the attitudes is the business-minded farmer the business-minded farmer this is right up there early anything that you can provide that gives them the ability to not only be more efficient but produce more more profit they're going to jump on and this is exactly the space they want so is the expectation that the Internet of Things products and services are idiot proof well there's issues out there in some cases with connectivity and storage of data and people's comfortable level Comfort levels associated with various scenarios but the other thing I will say whoever they've bought the product from they need training they need a backup they need service so it's it's really important you just can't sell a product and walk away you've got to have technical backup to troubleshoot issues and that's where these sort of products and services really come into their own because there's a real Bond created between the manufacturer the distributor and the farmer because they work through those issues yeah absolutely we will just take one more question Robert and then we will be looking to you to help us answer some of the other questions that are coming through now but just one interesting topic that came through early uh from uh suggest is wanting to know more about um an explanation on the scarcity of water and you know the impact that that has on some of the things you shared with us today if you put in place it put in place or address issues around climate change and variability of rainfall and variability of amounts of rainfall that's all then impacting on the availability of water for irrigation purposes the other thing I'll say that is a lot of the irrigation systems that have been set up were set up 30 40 50 60 years ago and that's when the population was way smaller so any technology that it looks at efficiency of water usage and or efficiency of then soil Morse moisture levels then is is really going to be looked at in the future really trying to evaluate and change all these watering systems is a huge job this again this topic is a huge one but skip the water of Water and also efficiency of water use going into the future using internet-based technology is a huge huge opportunity out there and it's only going to get more important yeah but brilliant I think Robert I just want to say thank you for for sharing your experience um and your knowledge um in this industry um you've absolutely caught the interest of of everybody listening to to this uh webinar today so thank you very much please stay with us um but I will now switch gears and hand over to um Andrea again Andrea I hope that you can hear us and that we can hand the floor to you to to share with everybody uh what Arduino is doing today in smart agritech thank you thank you Richard and thanks for having me today and so I call my session smart architect uh because Arduino has you know uh this kind of DNA that makes things to accelerate uh business we are talking about Arduino Pro so we are talking with the companies we are talking in this case with the smart architect company and of course also uh end users so the farmers so our idea coming from 15 years of experience in the Makerspace in the education space that we have now uh we would like to have the same and provide the same philosophy also to the business when it comes to the Agri Tech we have different uh different options so in the in this slide you can see that we have mainly three different pillars one is the system on modules I don't want to bother you so much with technology but just to give you an idea on how companies and uh people that can use our technology so we have a system on modules that are in some ways some kind of uh bricks so imagine a brick and around this brick you can compose your application that can be a wide range of uh and spawn different sectors in this case in the agriculture you can start from a brain and then adding what you need for achieve your goal so if if I have to think about the business company that works into agrica agriculture space then um Robert gave us a great Insight in the different part of what Precision agriculture is so it's composed by different needs uh different challenges right we talk about the water consumption and water scarcity we talk about the data um so there are multiple angles where companies that start their business from and using a system system on modules from from us they can uh you know in some way accelerate uh their uh business ideas then can iterate and then go and shrink the time to Market um then we have what we call the turnkey solution that are more slightly verticals applications hardware for applications this means that we have alongside the system on modules this uh boards that are mainly um ready to be used and we have some of them in different different business different uh sectors and we have one for agritech that comes basically from the feedback we have received uh from time to time and then during you know the iteration stage of ideas and products uh creation then we incorporated them to create a special let's say more vertical solution that can be used in conjunction with external sensors in conjunction with external actuators but they are meant to be used for a specific sensor and then on top of um all our Hardware solution we are well known for our good solution but of course during the years we added on top of the hardware also uh software and in this case we are starting from end to end so we have the hardware part and then we can also combine with services like Cloud every one talks about Cloud also in farming now data are are more and more important so having a place a secure place for um having those data then it's a great combination of of Hardware without um without saying that everything should be smart everything should be easier because everything that can be useful for and easy to use and adopt then at the end becomes a powerful tool for creating business around a specific sector so um when we talk about the system system on module we have different different boards I don't want to go on all our product portfolio because we have a lot but I would start just to give you an idea then on on our website you will see more and more if you are interested in arduino.cc slash Pro but this one the portenta H7 is the I would say that the first step when you have to have a product that it's uh powerful robust uh open in terms of openness in terms of open source of course but also in terms of open to new businesses because it has multiple ways to be connected to it has microcontrollers that can be run used for running for example a machine learning tool and then I will get I will be on this later it has Wi-Fi and Bluetooth so there's no need of adding other external sensors when it comes to communication protocol uh it has it's secure every connected Arduino board is secured by Design meaning that we have a secure element that can be used for protecting your data so the data is the heart of every single application knowing data collecting data organizing data everything it's if you think it's around data data coming from different sensors so during them in an easy way and then letting you know people that are using data to to be sure to be safe on on those in this case it's really important and the portenta H7 it could be the brain as as I said before we are an accelerator we act as a building block for companies that wants to integrate this solution into their end product so the use case as you can see uh there are industrial Machinery laboratory equipment computer vision plcs robotics controller so you can see there's a very variety of of of usage so next solution it's uh regarding vision so we have niklavision this is a really tiny board it's only two centimeter per two so it's a really a little bit square that has a lot of powerful and this uh with this board you can add for example Machine Vision I will have also an example later on this so uh this tiny board can be used for sensing and add Vision application to your uh Solutions so companies can use this board for adding uh machine learning Vision at the edge the next one it's another board um that it's specifically and this is uh the the vertical solution I was mentioning before it's uh it's a vertical solution so it's the Arduino edge control that it's exactly uh tailored for the agriculture Agri Tech world uh can we use uh indoor outdoor it has already solar panel capabilities of being powered from it has multiple connectivity options we talk about we are thinking about interculture we have open space large spaces so communication sending data from the field in this case uh the the board can be equipped with different uh communication protocols um Laura narrowband iot of course Wi-Fi when it just when it's the case 3G so cellular connectivity so depending on the need you can you know evolve your product or you can just adapt your product um we have different um we have different examples where companies started uh with uh with this board with a specific um part and then added later so are we going back later the next one is some kind of glue when we talk about Laura so this is a gateway for adding the Laura technology and lower Transmission in the field so again when I when I was talking about Hardware it was made of components at a different stage so we have boards we have in the middle we have the gateways and then we have the cloud but I think that we can go on and let some I will give you some example of actually our customer are using our ports so this one uh it's meshed farming so uh before uh you heard about different ways of managing data and mesh data so this is an example of a customer that uses our technology in conjunction with external data for example forecast for weather so weather forecast combined with the real-time data in order to have a Precision in terms of status of their crop and then you can see in the map adding GPS data the the company was able for example to predict the movement of some kind of weather condition or more important measuring by measuring data from the soil they would be able to prevent the usage of chemicals because in that sense by measuring this data they were able to understand if some kind of pest will be appear or not the second usage is around enriching data and how we can enrich data for example using AI so artificial intelligence right at the edge so again with with our ports with the edge control by adding machine learning on on top of the data coming from the soil then we can add Rich data and give lots of more information to the farmer to add to the agronomist and giving some more insights beside you know the pure data that can come from from the soil the next one it's an additional soil monitoring and you can see here it's uh it's quite standard installation in this case uh there are also the position the possibility of having uh command and control so monitoring data coming from the field and then going to the cloud and from the cloud then also decide right straight from the cloud itself to the device decide what to do so open valves start watering the plants or in case of uh need just close everything because weather forecast you know uh will would say that raining is arriving so these are and this is another way of using our products and another one is harder the product you can see here we have a blue box inside this box so we have uh the uh edge control in this case the edge control was used uh leveraging some special uh Watermark sensors that you can see on the right hand uh this was used for um analyze the the soil in the tension uh word so I'm not a specialist of Agriculture but I learned a lot from from our customer that it's it's always interesting to see how our boards are combined together to achieve some kind of specific result so it's always amazing to see that uh what we thought and act as a neighbor then at the end it will become an idea will become a product that will become a solution that probably never thought before so it's always interesting to learn a lot so giving us feedback in this case uh it was a specific question how we can support those kind of special sensors so this is again a way of using a more straightforward way our products and the last uh it's uh Smart Vision I took the four about Smart Vision and this is an application so uh in this case we are thinking about why near the best monitoring so um adding Vision capabilities to the uh to the board and then on the edge so right on the board right in the field we can identify some specific uh bugs in uh this was used for detecting a specific bug and and check and count them so thinking about identifying some Trend in order to prevent the um uh the massive uh existing of of this bug so this is again another usage and the nice stuff is that you can combine all together so you can see on your left hand side that you have one as sector one with this field sector and you have this iot node that the multiple iot nodes can talk with the gauge Gateway and the edge Gateway can send your data to the cloud so I think that are more or less in time so I thank you for your for your time and I give you back the word Richard brilliant Andre so good to have you with us today um we will just take a pause now for the live q a um so um everybody can use the chat box again to to ask Andrea any questions I'm not ashamed to say whilst people are thinking of those questions that I am a huge Arduino fan Andrea I could talk to you all afternoon about the meshed farming AI farming Smart Vision solutions that you share they are incredibly Innovative and interesting and I think you know Arduino is uniquely positioned to support agritech from the system of modules from the turnkey Solutions all the way through to the Arduino Cloud it's a very exciting uh proposition so Andrea I think we've got some questions uh coming through let me uh let me see what we have here I think actually um whilst I'm waiting for them to come through there was a question um from Tom guy um it was actually a question that was posed when uh Robert was talking but it was actually about um how Open Source Hardware and software interact with each other uh in agricultural uh Solutions and I'm guessing you're seeing that more and more in the Arduino proposition the the software and the hardware between uh been so important yeah absolutely that's uh that's a really great question uh yeah uh we are uh we are also we are seeing when it comes to open source or open versus you know close the source or uh software or Hardware um we are seeing some kind of transition so meaning that uh we see more and more uh different companies that uh open data or opens open the software because they realize that at the end this kind of culture you know of sharing data it's a win-win solution right so in this way uh it's more easier and more possible either for the end user um you gave the best from each one right so having the best having the data and then of course it means that at the end uh the the final user is happier right and this it's it can be only doable with you know opening these data opening um software um we we heard some something around the world of uh people that are you know in some way um upset because they cannot repair their you know uh things because it's everything it's closed so more and more we are seeing this uh this culture uh moving moving forward yeah yeah brilliant yeah we've got so many questions coming through now and I think I just want to say Andre that you've inspired so many people uh we're getting lots of comments that you've given them so many ideas to think about but I just want to take a couple so um we've had a question here from sujith how um is Arduino supporting renewable energy you know how are your technology supporting renewable energy sources do you have a view on that Andrea um yeah well as I said it's um we are not exactly uh um I would say vertical in in different sectors so we do provide this kind of ability to innovate you know we we provide all the needed Tools in terms of Hardware in terms of software for you know creating products when it comes to renewable energy sources um I I can say that I saw some project in the energy uh in a photovolt type uh and affordable type stations um we have actually a customer that it's creating uh I don't remember exactly the name but it was some kind of a group with the pool of photovolt type systems and they were used asking us uh to create something to you know manage and optimize all the different sources another idea and another thing that came in my mind is that a customer wants to add value to his product when it comes to wind energy source so windmills um and it it was again some kind of improvement in terms of product so when it comes to renewable uh there's different ways of approach and the right and the nice thing is that we can provide you know all the building blocks that are quite open open for as a DNA so they can be used for almost anything yeah brilliant I think that you know Arduino is the you know the king of Open Source so no doubt there we've got a couple more time for a couple more questions I just want to take one from Stuart and he's put a brilliant question in here is hi Andrea other Arduino products been applied to the circular economy applications such as emission reduction carbon capture towards net zero objectives do you have a A View from that from an Arduino perspective um yes it's uh it's quite interesting because um either internally but of course with the with the customers the the ability of having data around so thinking about carbon zero uh objective we are on on our side I would say they are really um really sensitive to this kind of you know commitments or when it comes to this kind of um thoughts around sustainability in general uh then of course [Music] um different ways of using our boards different uh using um our solution that could be applied in circular economy um because they they really have some kind of ability to add value to this uh different you know different application sector and so also this when it comes to renewable when it comes to simpler economy uh carbon zero so there are multiple ways to use it so yes absolutely uh are apply that brilliant and I think just just one more uh question if we can Andrea and this comes from Tom I think this is a great question obviously Arduino is known for community so Tom's question is will there be some support communities from Arduino for the source code for the different applications such as the sensor um calibrations will will that be available through the Arduino communities okay that's a good question uh I would say yes uh meaning that um the nice thing of when I think of arduinos also if you have sensor and you write the name the sensor and you Google it and then you add Arduino library at 99 you will find something already there so it's uh it's absolutely you know the proven that uh our our community it's really great and of course we we support the community Itself by this you know giving you know uh stuff and get support feedback and of course cold and so uh yes when it comes to specific sensors um or third parties third-party sensor because you know the possibility of support different kind of sensor then of course it's it's more on the community side we we help usually when there are some some issues of course on our boards we do provide all the libraries that are needed in terms of calibration um I'm just wondering so I talked last week for sensor calibration for a temperature sensor calibration so uh also with the partnership with the with the vendors in or whatever it is then we can provide that support either from the vendor so this is another good opportunity for us to give to the community yeah wonderful um with so many questions um everybody who's asked questions that we've not had chance to to take directly um just remember we we will come back to you so uh don't worry um Andrea I'll say thank you uh please stay with us um but um if we now move on to the next part um I'd like to to pull everything that we've heard today from uh from Robert and Andrea um I'd like to just summarize a little bit with regards to what we the team at OK do are observing and what we are driving forward with our partners uh through 2023 and Beyond in this very Innovative uh and evolving industry so I'd like to just share very quickly with you uh five smart farming technologies that we at OK do are seen as a transformation within the industry and then I'd like to talk a little bit about the different platforms that we have from our partners like Arduino but also from some other technology partners that we're now driving into different applications so the first one I'd just like to touch on and which Andrea gave us some real insight into is his senses and there's no doubt you know that agricultural senses now the data that they capture is providing uh invaluable information for the decisions that are being made um in those businesses in those farming Industries and we see that as something that we want to drive faster and with more Innovation as we move forward the second one that I want to share with you is robotics um actually I think we took a great question earlier um on Robotics and and how it's featuring more widely across different Industries but obviously in agriculture when we think about machinery and Robotics we often think about large-scale Machinery but actually at OK do we are seeing much more streamlined simple robotics linked to Pick and Pack crop monitoring and wider scale harvesting in controlled environments this is again something that we are looking to enable through our technology uh moreover this year the next one is drones and we've we've touched on this already as well but drones are helping Farmers plan ahead their Technologies now that are enabling Farmers to harvest data in real time and to look at enhancing decision making boosting productivity um and we're seeing drones being used in a multitude of different applications and one of the biggest that we see at OK do with the clients and customers that we work with today is signs of disease flagging and where there is risk and and where there is intervention required if we move on the next one is cloud software and Arduino have an incredible Cloud solution linked to all of their Technologies but specifically on their Arduino Pro patenta range but we are seeing software as being a pivotal part of Agriculture moving forward how data is obtained how it's assimilated how it's aggregated and the dashboards that are then made available empowering again the decision making and that is needed in this fast-paced industry and then finally um we also see an emergence of security Technologies this is a little bit different to some of the things I've already talked to in that actually as well as practical farming Solutions you know smart Tech is used on farms for automated Security Solutions we're seeing more digitally Advanced security set up from computer vision from security breach detection and also from protection through more generalized security features that are enabled digitally and supplied to the farmers and the businesses in a more intuitive way and this is something again that we're seeing as a trend in the technology platforms that we're providing so I said right at the start that that okay do we are very focused on single ball Computing we're very focused on the platforms that can be scaled into different applications and I just want to share with you a couple of ways in which the single ball computers that we're using and working with today are supporting smart and precision agriculture so the first one is data collection yeah of course these platforms are perfectly positioned to collect data from Precision sensors and from other external uh components and share that data in like I say in an intuitive software platform they're used for monitoring um connected to cameras and other detection equipment that can feedback real-time information where it's most needed and the link to that is the Remote Management these devices do not need to be in a cluster in a centralized position they can be scaled remotely using different types of connectivity such as Laura one long range wide area low power and these devices are all being installed with this type of connectivity and Technology crop optimization monitoring again adjusting temperatures in close control environments ensuring humidity uh in greenhouses is meeting the recommended and ideal temperatures making it an ideal growing environment for specific crops and making sure that those crops are protected as much as possible from diseases that commonly are associated uh with them then finally automation sbc's ultimate Farm processes irrigation we talked about water scarcity and the management of irrigation how that is managed a system level these platforms are helping fertilization Pest Control reducing manual labor and increasing efficiency reducing error risk are all applications that are possible from these devices from Arduino and and from the broader okay do portfolio and why do sbcs make the right choice why are they the right choice for this Market they increase time to Market often single ball computers are pre-designed fully optimized with a range of software stack that can be designed directly into agriculture applications that the performance versus cost because these sbcs are made in scale globally they've already been optimized so the cost of the microprocessors the sensors on board the memory configurations have already been completely optimized for the solutions that they're most likely to be used in they offer engineering efficiencies you know we often okay do talk about providing the path of least resistance for engineers in the field and single ball computers in their small form factor low-cost high performance often speed up the design cycle by months not not just days they sit as part of a wider ecosystem and so I'm proud that we work with Arduino and offer such a broad array of system and modules different processor types and different accessories to support the designing whether that's be around power efficiency whether that be around how information is displayed or whether that be how we maximize computer vision technology in the smart agriculture field okay do with support from Arduino is ideally positioned to do that and finally we offer supply chain optimization we offer our Solutions globally with a global manufacturing footprint and they're completely scalable so we offer customization and where what we might have off the shelf doesn't meet the end requirement and so that's through Design Services configuration and and full customization of solutions so it's a really exciting part of the Innovation that we're seeing in smart Precision agriculture moving forward so finally I just want to share with you that you know we've had the luxury of Arduino with us today but okay dude we are incredibly focused on a handful of design-led Technology partners and I just want to share with you that you know Arduino Pro is an incredibly strategic partner and we love to speak to any of you with regards to the challenges that you're facing the Innovation that you're bringing and how we can potentially help with support from Andrea and the team from Arduino but we also offer some incredible solutions from our partners nxp supported by polyhex a range of single ball computers based on the i.com X8

platform and we also work with rock chip a Leading Edge a iot provider that opens up the spectrum of capability for our industry real customers as well as some really innovative solutions around AI with Nvidia with Leak Detection water detection surface to cloud with layer and also with Google coral and their tensorflow solutions that are being used now across a range of Agriculture applications so I just want to now close the call to say thank you to everybody for joining and if you do have any questions from me or for any of the team at OK do you can get in touch with us the contact details are now being provided and but I just want to say a big thank you to Andrea and Robert for the insight and thank you for the engaging questions that you shared with us today thank you very much until next time I'll say goodbye foreign

2023-04-19 08:16

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