ONiO is an innovative fabless IoT company focused on developing advanced batteryless microcontrollers powered by ambient energy. Our mission is to revolutionize the IoT landscape by delivering clean-energy solutions that liberate devices from the constraints of traditional batteries. ONiO.zero, our line of versatile batteryless general-purpose microcontrollers, can efficiently harness power from a wide range of sources, including radio frequency (RF) waves, thermal, solar/light, and piezo signals. At ONiO, we envision a future where IoT devices are battery-free, contributing to a more minimalist, user-friendly, cost-effective, and environmentally sustainable ecosystem.
The agriculture sector is poised for a digital transformation, leveraging on new technology tools to improve productivity while mitigating the environmental effects. Bottom-line, a path towards precision agriculture, with the promise of "using less to grow more".
This project focuses on the development of new self-powered sensor systems for precision agriculture. Specifically, ONiO targets true wireless hardware powered by energy harvesting only, enabling seamless data-driven planning and operations by agriculture professionals. The project is implemented in collaboration with Sensonomic, a company specialising in data-driven software and applications for sustainable agriculture. In this project, Sensonomic is driving developments towards turning data into actionable insights that farmers can use in their planning and daily operations. Finally, the project also involves collaboration with Maere Agricultural School (in short, Maere), which is a key partner for testing the developed technologies in field trials.
So far, ONiO has developed compact and cost-effective sensor units to monitor soil moisture and temperature as well as light levels, based on ONiO.zero. Besides, ONiO has developed a gateway unit powered by solar/light energy, which communicates with the sensor units (Bluetooth radio) and enables connectivity to the cloud (cellular connectivity). This enables a hardware system completely wireless and self-powered. ONiO has also developed firmware for deploying the system, data collection infrastructure and web interfaces for data visualization.
The system was initially deployed and tested at tunnels used for growing strawberries at Maere. Data collection was carried out from March to August 2025. Sensonomic is processing and analysing the data, namely to find possible correlations between the data from the pilot sensor system and plant performance data collected by Maere during the planting/growing season. The partners have also identified the main challenges from this first field deployment and test period, and the lessons learned are being used to improve the system for the second field trial.
The second field trial is already ongoing and focuses on tomatoes grown at Maere’s greenhouse. An upgraded set of hardware (sensor units and gateways) has been installed at the greenhouse in late August 2025, and data collection is undergoing. During the coming months, the partners will keep focus on this trial, collecting and analysing data, as well as analysing opportunities for continued improvement of the hardware and software systems.
New technologies and digital solutions hold the potential to revolutionize agriculture and food production, in particular improving productivity while mitigating the intensive use of resources/inputs and the respective environmental effects. Bottom-line, a path towards precision agriculture, with the promise of "using less to grow more".
This project will focus on new self-powered sensor systems for precision agriculture - i.e. true wireless hardware powered by energy harvesting only, enabling seamless data-driven planning and operations by agriculture professionals. The project will deliver: 1) wireless and batteryless sensor units to measure the most relevant soil parameters (moisture, temperature, pH and nutrients/NPK); 2) wireless communication gateways powered by energy harvesting (solar/light energy and other sources as needed), bridging communication with the sensor units (Bluetooth or similar) and data relay to the cloud through cellular/LTE protocols; 3) algorithms and software for data processing and analytics, turning data into actionable insights that farmers can use in their planning and daily operations. All project activities will be guided by cost-effectiveness considerations, with the ultimate goal of reducing system costs to a level that enables deploying dense sensor networks and the use of precision agriculture technologies on a large scale.
The project is led by ONiO, a high-tech SME focused on self-powered, battery-free solutions to the Internet of Things (IoT) market. The project is anchored on ONiO's unmatched background on ultra-low power electronics and batteryless IoT solutions - namely ONiO.zero, an ultra-low-power wireless microcontroller designed bottom-up for energy harvesting devices. Partners include Sensonomic, an SME that specializes in data-driven software and applications for sustainable agriculture, and Maere Agricultural School, which will assist with testing the developed technologies in greenhouse and open-field trials.
