Greenhouse Management

Farmer's Hive greenhouse module allows remote monitoring and optimization of greenhouse farming. You will find the features of this solution in details below.

Table of Contents

1.0 Structure of Greenhouse Asset

Each greenhouse asset consists of one of more plant groups; which in turn consists of plant devices. Rows in a physical greenhouse are represented as plant devices in Farmer's hive. A group of plant devices are classified under a plant group. All plant devices in a group have the same thresholds maintained for them at the plant group level. A plant group could be rows of identical crops. The basis of classification is left entirely to the farmer.

Sensor data are collected by plant devices and are aggregated at the plant group level. Monitoring of greenhouses implies monitoring the various plant groups.

2.0 Manage Greenhouse Asset

2.1 Add Greenhouse

To add a greenhouse to your project, select Greenhouse Management from Farmer's Hive dropdown and click Add Greenhouse button

1. Provide greenhouse information in the dialog window such as the name, GPS coordinates and timezone of your greenhouse, and click Add. Default information are provided to aid this process. Please note that the greenhouse name should not contain white spaces.

2. Your screen should look like this:

2.2  Plant Groups

Click the PLANT GROUP button to navigate to plant group home page.

2.2.1  Add plant group to greenhouse

To add a plant group, click Add Plant Group button and provide your desired plant group name, thresholds, and contact list (if any) in the dialog box. We provide default thresholds for each measured variable. However, the user can always change these thresholds to that of their choice. Again, the plant group name should not contain any white spaces.

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

2.2.2 Edit a plant group 

To change the name of a plant 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 a plant group 

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

2.3  Plant devices

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

2.3.1  Add Plant device to Plant group

Click the Add Plant Device button on the top left to add a plant device. Again, a dialog box pops up to allow you select the device, and the choose the units 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 Plant device

Use the Edit button to change the units of measurement

2.3.3  Delete Plant device

Select the remove button to delete a plant device 

3.0 Other Greenhouse Action Buttons

3.1 Edit

Use the Edit button to change the greenhouse name or description. For instance, I updated the Description to "Test".

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

3.2 Insights

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

3.2.1  Data Measurements

A tabular display of sensor data for all plant groups in the greenhouse. A line chart for each of these information is presented below the table.

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).

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

3.3 Remove

Use the REMOVE action button to delete a greenhouse. If you delete a greenhouse, all plant groups (and plant devices in the affected plant groups) automatically gets deleted. 

4.0 Device History

To view a detailed report of the data history for any plant 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

Use this module to get the summary of alerts for each variable monitored by the device, and the maximum and minimum daily values for the period in question.