For CEA Growers: Tips for Substrate Monitoring and Automation
Based on my communications and meetings with our customers on solutions for substrate monitoring and decision making in controlled environment agriculture (CEA), I have identified a numbers of important areas to briefly discuss: 1) Sensor quantity optimization Most growers do not need a lot of sensors to monitor their grow rooms. There are good ways of determining the optimum number of sensors required for different applications. In addition to an unnecessarily high cost, a large number of sensors in one facility can create serious design, installation and maintenance headaches for different parties involved. More data does not translate into better insight or decision-making unless we know how to deal with “big data”. Large amount of data that grower does not know what to do with leads to frustration and mistrust in the technology. More data does not translate into better insight or decisions unless we know how to deal with “big data”. Large amount of data that gro...