Farm Management

Our farm management module is ideal for cases where the farmer intends to monitor environmental variables and how it affects the activities on his/her farm. These activities can range from monitoring the temperature in a cold store room that housing temperature sensitive products, to observing the soil moisture level of the soil where certain plants are grown. Activities relating to greenhouse farming should be monitored using our solution for greenhouse.

Table of Contents

1.0 Structure of a Farm

A farm is divided into groups. A group refers to an activity as explained earlier above. We recommend naming the groups by the type of activity  for easy management. A farmer can have one or more devices in a group. The thresholds or limits for the various monitored environmental variables are maintained at the group level for all devices in a group.

Each device in a group may have a list of contacts for escalating alerts generated during the monitoring process. 

2.0 Manage Farm Asset

2.1 Add Farm

To add a farm to your project, select Farm Management from Farmer's Hive dropdown and use Add Farm button at the top right.

1. Provide farm information in the dialog window such as the name, GPS coordinates and timezone of your farm, and click Add. Default information are provided to aid this process. 

2. Your screen should look like this:

2.2  Groups

Click the GROUP button to go to Group home page as shown below.

2.2.1  Add Group to Farm

To add a group, click Add Group button and provide your desired group name, thresholds, and contact list (if any) in the dialog box. We provide default thresholds for each measured variable. 

After clicking the Add button, the new group will be displayed as shown below:

2.2.2 Edit Group 

To change the name of a group or the thresholds for the climatic conditions being monitored, select the Edit button to do this. A dialog box, similar to that in add plant group operation, is displayed again for you to make desired changes to the plant group.

2.2.3 Delete Group 

Click the Remove action button of the group to be deleted. 

2.3  Devices

From the farm group home page, select the Device action button on the appropriate group to land to a farm device home page.

2.3.1  Add Device to Group

Click the Add Device button on the top left to add a farm device. Again, a dialog box pops up to allow you select the device, and the choose the unit(s) of measurement for sensor data.

After providing units for sensor data and selecting device form available registered device(s), click the Add button to complete this step.

2.3.2  Edit Device

Use the Edit button to change the unit(s) of measurement

2.3.3  Delete Device

Select the remove button to delete a plant device 

3.0 Other Farm Action Buttons

3.1 Edit

Use the Edit button to change the farm name or description. For instance, I updated the Description from "test" to "test farm".

The change will be effected when you click Update button as shown below:

3.2 Insights

Click Insights to monitor farm climatic conditions on a dashboard. The dashboard has three gadgets; Data Measurements, Data Visualisation, and Alert gadgets

3.2.1  Data Measurements

A tabular display of the last 5 sensor data readings for all devices in the farm. A line chart for each of these information is presented below the table.

1. You can choose to select a time range for which you intend to view the sensor records. This is achieved by providing the start or/and end dates (To and From). This triggers the Frequency dropdown menu for you to select the sampling rate (every 30 minutes or 1 hour).

2. Use the Download button to export the table on the screen to a .csv file.

3.2.2  Data Visualisation

This consists of three major sections:

• The Map: Using the GPS coordinates of the farm provided, a summary of the farm information can be viewed on a map. Click the beacon in the map to view this information

• The Gauges: This displays the most recent data received for the selected plant device as well as the upper and lower limits for the variable (temperature, relative humidity, soil moisture etc) being monitored. 

• The Statistics: The minimum and maximum readings for each variable is measured daily and displayed on a table for each device

3.2.3  Alert

Alert notifications received when thresholds for any variable is exceeded. However, when contacts are maintained the plant device in question, messages are sent via email and/or SMS. 

This gadget provides two options:

• Edit Thresholds: This button serves as a shortcut to farm group homepage.  From there, select the target group and change any of the thresholds as desired.
• Edit Device Contact: This button serves as a shortcut to redirect you to device contact homepage.

3.3 Remove

Use the REMOVE action button to delete a farm. 

4.0 Device History

To get the data history for any  device, use the device history menu to achieve this. To navigate to this page, use: Devices → Device History and select the desired device and period you want to view the history.

5.0 Report

Navigate to Farm Report page by using: Reports → Farm Report to view periodic performance report for each device. This shows:

• the summary of the number of times each variable was out of range when a given device and period.

• the maximum and minimum values per day for each variable under the given period.