Self-powered sensor systems for Precision Agriculture

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". In this project, ONiO will develop new self-powered sensor systems for precision agriculture. Specifically, we will target true wireless hardware powered by energy harvesting only, enabling seamless data-driven planning and operations by agriculture professionals. The project will deliver compact and cost-effective sensor units to monitor key soil parameters, namely moisture, temperature, pH and key nutrient levels. Besides we will target wireless and batteryless systems for data communication to the cloud. The project will build on a key partnership with Sensonomic, a company specialising in data-driven software and applications for sustainable agriculture. Sensonomic will drive developments towards turning data into actionable insights that farmers can use in their planning and daily operations. In addition, Maere Agricultural School will be a key partner in the project for testing the developed technologies in greenhouse and open-field trials.

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.