LandWISE 2015 Presenter – Gert Hattingh

Installing the WINTEC wireless soil moisture sensor array

Gert Hattingh is Industry Research Champion at the Waikato Institute of Technology in Hamilton.

Gert’s current work involves finding ways to build more sustainable and energy efficient homes, finding better ways for the normal household to live sustainably, and evaluating new technologies.

Gert says the most burning question in any business venture is whether your actions will cost you money, or make you money.  Any decision you make in the production, marketing or operational sphere has an influence on this statement.  This paradigm has been a design key since Wintec have ventured into producing cost effective sensor arrays and wireless networks.

In the modern measurement world, there are three cost drivers – quality of the sensor(s), the cost of the network carrying the data, and the cost of making sense of and using the data.

Gert and colleagues started off by looking at the network and the data carrier first, and designed a generic sensor module to host and manage almost any sensor type.  They also developed a database model that would host any data from sensors, as well as the encryption and data quality protocols.

To date, their system can host the following type of sensors:  GPS, Air Humidity, Air Temperature (2 sensors), Air pressure, solar irradiation, wind speed, wind direction, soil moisture (various sensors), pH, conductivity, dissolved oxygen, oxidation-reduction potential, ammonia, CO2, methane, propane, NOX and some alcohols.

A single sensor module can carry at most thirteen sensors, with a practical thirty sensor modules per network.  This totals to 390 sensors per network.

This technology is being trialed at the LandWISE MicroFarm, gathering, transmitting and processing soil moisture information from an array of sensors.