The threat of global climate change, extreme weather frequency increases year by year, farmers need real-time weather information more than before, in order to make better decisions to reduce agricultural losses. Arable palm-sized networking sensor Pulsepod, built-in GPS and advanced sensors, help farmers to collect information needed for farming.
According to Network World, the World food programme (WFP) warned that many droughts, fires and storms, threatening food security in the billions of people. In order to adapt to global climate change, farmers need instant and reliable information, in order to respond to the local climate conditions, choose the most suitable sowing and planting date.
Traditional climate sensors are expensive, inconvenient to use in most developing countries, but along with the Internet of things (IoT) and networking become a trend, more parity sensors available for easy operation, including Arable Pulsepod.
Pulsepod by Arable and Bould research and development of the Design, not only cheap, but through the solar energy to electricity, is easy to install, it built a GPS and higher-order sensor can measure the crop growth, soil environment and climate conditions, etc., also support mobile phone (2 g / 3 g), wi-fi and bluetooth connection, all collected data can be transmitted to the application (App) interface such as Granular, further complete the data analysis.
Pulsepod built-in raindrop spectrometer, as long as the analysis of raindrops electronic pulse number and the strength, can be learned that rainfall. Pulsepod net radiometer, measurable solar short-wave radiation, and long wave radiation from the surface of the earth and sky, add up is the net radiation, that is, the total energy of crop receives. Spectrometer is based on narrowband reflectivity, measuring water content, chlorophyll number and crop growth progress.
Arable CEO Adam Wolf with the University of California, Davis (UC Davis) a bachelor's degree in agricultural economy, and Stanford University (Stanford University), Ph.D., a sustainable agriculture experts. After long time of the fieldwork, the Wolf and the Design team Bould Design found must integrate crop growth, soil, and local weather information, in order to make more perfect agricultural decision, thus to reduce the risk, but the bottleneck in data collection, so just released her Pulsepod Arable Internet device, is expected to change the way of means of agricultural use. Wolf said besides applied in agriculture, the future hope to be able to assist the government monitoring of urban flood, fire, or water quality.
Many companies have started using Pulsepod technology, including manufacturing center sprinkler system and other farm equipment Valley Irrigation, Norway fertilizer manufacturer sharp International, the berry brand Driscoll 's and Winery Francis Ford Coppola Winery and Treasury Wine Estates, etc.
Arable have angel investors to invest $1.5 million, and the other for the National Science Foundation (National Science Foundation) $4 million grant.
