Build and Deploy Your Smart Farming Project in Days (versus Months) with Seeed SenseCAP Products and Machinechat Ready-to-Use IoT Software
System integrators and IoT developers can dramatically reduce time, resources, and costs in developing and deploying commercial environmental monitoring projects with ready-to-use IoT LoRaWAN solutions. Seeed Studio IIoT hardware (SenseCAP LoRaWAN sensors and gateways, Odyssey x86 and reServer) and Machinechat® JEDI Pro Seeed Studio Edition software allow system integrators and developers to quickly build and deploy Smart Agriculture and other environmental monitoring projects in days.
Solution Partners: 
Background
IoT projects usually involve integration and deployment of a set of layers (Figure 1), including Perception layer, Network layer, Middleware layer, Application layer, and Business layer, The whole process require many different technical areas of expertise, including but not limited to hardware & mechanical engineering, software development, and testing, etc.
Figure 1: IoT Deployment Model. Source: Machinechat
- Perception Layer: A layer has sensors for sensing the real world and gathering information about the environment.
Typical options: Build custom hardware or Go with ready-to-deploy hardware
- Network Layer: Consists of network connectivity hardware (gateways, servers, and embedded computers) that is responsible for connecting to other devices and transporting raw sensor data. Typical options: Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, Cellular, LoRa, etc.
- Middleware and Application Layer: Includes software that processes and normalizes raw data, and allows for processed data to be visualized, monitored, managed, and stored. Typical options: Invest significant resources to build a customized solution or Leverage ready-to-use no code IoT software
- Business Layer: Manages the whole system, including end-user and vertical-specific applications, business, and profit models.
In addition to the complicated and resource-consuming integration process of IoT projects, following concerns are common among developers and integrators and needed to be addressed:
- Data privacy, security, and control
- Integration with existing systems and projects
- Power consumption and range of the IoT network
- Time and cost of development and path to ROI
- On-going maintenance and technical support requirements and costs
- Scalability and expandability of IoT systems
What’s the challenge?
Developing an IoT application to visualize data, create rules, notifications, and monitoring can require weeks and months of workhours for an experienced software engineer team. One article estimated that just building a front end IoT application could take up to 2,000 workhours alone. Issues such as hardware integration, data privacy and security, user requirements, proprietary data formats, etc., can add additional technical complexity to developing IoT application. It is not a surprise that most IoT project cost overruns are eaten up by software development.
Developing an affordable, easy-to-deploy and rapidly scalable solution to monitor environmental conditions wirelessly and securely at a low-power consumption level across environmental or faming related projects becomes a hurdle to be solved.
Figure 2: IoT Solution at Greenhouse. Source: Machinechat
The solution?
In face of the above challenge, Machinechat and Seeed Studio came together to provide developers and integrators with a ready-to-use-and-deploy LoRaWAN IoT solutions. Seeed Studio provides ready-to-deploy, industrial grade sensors and gateways and edge servers. Machinechat’s JEDI Pro Seeed Studio Edition software (JEDI Pro SSE) provides a turnkey single binary for data collection, transformation, monitoring, display, reporting and data management.
Detailed components within the solution are listed below (Figure 3):
Hardware components:
- Perception layer: Seeed’s IIoT devices – SenseCAP LoRaWAN sensors
Sensors can measure and transfer key data of smart farming, such as air temperature, humidity, light, CO2 level, soil, and air pressure.
- Network layer: SenseCAP LoRaWAN Gateways, Seeed ‘s mini-PC and edge server – Odyssey Blue or reServer to run LoRaWAN Network stack and JEDI Pro SSE
Odyssey Blue is a x86 Quad Core Celeron J4125 Windows 10 Mini PC with 128GB external SSD.
reServer is an edge server powered by 11th Gen Intel® Core™ i3 or i5 with various pre-installed memory module and SSD level.
Note: SenseCAP sensors and gateways support EU868, US915, AS923, and AU915 frequency.
Software:
- Middleware and application layer: JEDI Pro SSE
A ready-to-use on-premises single binary software solution for IoT data collection, visualization, monitoring, and data storage that can be integrated into IoT solutions.
Figure 3: Seeed and Machinechat’s IIoT solution Diagram
The whole workflow goes as follows (Figure 4):
- Sensors sense the real world and gather environmental information, data transmitted to the LoRaWAN gateway through LoRa protocol.
- LoRaWAN gateway receives data and forwards to the network server software.
- In this solution, ChirpStack is required to be installed on the Odyssey Blue or reServer. The ChirpStack Network Server deduplicates, decrypts and converts the data from LoRaWAN gateway into a common data format and make it available via integrations including MQTT and HTTP. It also provides a web-based interface to quickly onboard and manage devices.
- Ready-to-use JEDI Pro SSE software is installed on the server, enabling the collection of sensor data and ability to act on it through easy-to-configure dashboards, rules, actions, notifications, and network monitoring. JEDI Pro SSE is an on-premises software solution – therefore, data is controlled and stored at the local level, enhancing data security and privacy. In addition, there are no cloud processing costs.
- The Data then can be visualized and managed on any mobile or desktop browser.
Figure 4: System Diagram of the solution
Currently, Seeed and Machinechat are partnering with Digi-Key to distribute the solution globally.
What are the benefits?
By adopting the ready-to-use IoT LoRaWAN private network solution, both developers and integrators and their customers can benefit from accelerating the path from IoT idea to field-ready project:
- Lower overall development and deployment costs
- Enables developers to focus more development time and resources on business and user-facing applications and processes that bring the most benefits to the customer (versus getting bogged down in the “rough first mile” of middleware and application layer development)
- Delivers local control over data and reduced cloud data processing costs
- Enhanced data privacy, control, and security
- Easier integration with existing systems and applications
- Path to expansion as needs change without the need to build custom hardware or software
- Reduces complexity and costs of maintenance and support by using hardware that can be readily purchased off the shelf
Application scenario
- In-house or commercial IoT projects that require data logging and monitoring
- Smart agriculture, greenhouse monitoring, landscaping, irrigation, and precision farming use case scenarios
- Environment-related applications, such as fire detection, cold storage monitoring, and animal husbandry
Product features:
Seeed Studio SenseCAP gateways and sensors
Seeed Studio Edge Server options
Hardware bundle links
Notes: It is not required to purchase the whole bundle. Hardware listed in the bundle are optional. We kindly suggest our customers to purchase software and hardware in separate order. (One order for software only, another for hardware)
Additional information
- Developers and integrators can select sensors, gateways, and edge servers based on requirements of their specific IoT projects, prices will be added up automatically. Each hardware/software can be purchased separately.
- Software license code communication: Once you purchase the Machinechat JEDI Pro SSE, we will email you the license code to activate the software. All sales are final. We kindly suggest you reading the software End User License Agreement before placing your order.
- Free trial of JEDI Pro SSE: And if you are interested in a free limited-time trial version of JEDI Pro SSE, please contact your account manager, or leave your comments below, we will screen your qualification and communicate further information with you.
References
- Whitepaper: How System Integrators and Developers Can Implement Affordable, Secure LoRa IoT Solutions Quickly
- Solution implementation guideline: Set up a private LoRaWAN Sensor Network with Machinechat and Seeed SenseCAP
- Machinechat help center: projects, ideas, and source code; Product Guides; FAQ; Troubleshooting
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