INTEL-IRRIS NEWSLETTER #1
After 1 year of project, here is NEWSLETTER #1!
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Content of NEWSLETTER #1 – June 2022
- Presentation of the PRIMA INTEL-IRRIS project
- How INTEL-IRRIS will meet its objectives of low-cost, efficiency and simplicity?
- What is the INTEL-IRRIS starter-kit?
- Can I build my own INTEL-IRRIS starter-kit?
- What is Edge-Computing and why INTEL-IRRIS is adopting this approach?
- Where can I get information about the complex soil-water-plant-atmosphere ecosystem to better understand the challenges?
- What are the next Newsletters?
- How to subscribe to Newsletters, ask questions and provide feedback to Newsletters?
PRESENTATION OF THE PRIMA INTEL-IRRIS PROJECT
INTEL-IRRIS is a PRIMA project from Section 2 Multitopic 2020 Thematic Area 1-Water management addressing low cost, lean solutions for enhancing irrigation efficiency of small-scale farms. INTEL-IRRIS will provide the smallholder farmers a more efficient management of its available water by deploying of an open, low-cost and autonomous soil humidity sensing system based on IoT and smart technologies to optimize usage of water for irrigation. INTEL-IRRIS’s main objectives are summarized in the following illustration. The official presentation of INTEL-IRRIS can be downloaded here.
HOW INTEL-IRRIS WILL MEET ITS OBJECTIVES OF LOW-COST, EFFICIENCY AND SIMPLICITY?
INTEL-IRRIS adopts a low-cost design approach where a generic IoT hardware & software platform developed in previous international projects (EU H2020 WAZIUP & EU H2020 WAZIHUB) will be adapted for the specific task of irrigation optimization. For instance, the IoT platform is 100% open source and can be built from off-the-shelves components with the possibility to adapt these components from what can be purchased from local markets and manufacturers. Most importantly, being low-cost does not mean less robust nor less secured! The IoT hardware & software platform can run for more than 2 years with 2 regular AA batteries and all data transmissions are encrypted.
However, when adopting a low-cost design approach, reliability and accuracy of the physical soil humidity sensors can dramatically limit the efficiency of the deployed system. INTEL-IRRIS proposes a low-cost water control system but will improve its efficiency integrating advanced calibration models of the different sensors to increase accuracy.
INTEL-IRRIS consortium includes agriculture experts in the complex soil-water-plant-atmosphere ecosystem, in sensor calibration & test facilities in controlled environments and in irrigation optimization. More information on the advanced calibration studies and models will be provided soon in a next Newsletter highlighting calibration of low-cost capacitive and water tension sensors!
INTEL-IRRIS implements the “Intelligent Irrigation in-the-box” concept by proposing a “plug-&-sense” system using recent advances in enabling technologies such as Internet-of-Things (IoT) with Long-Range radio connectivity and Artificial Intelligence (AI) for corrective & predictive analytics. Data transmitted by deployed soil moisture devices will be processed by a versatile and low-cost edge-enabled IoT gateway developed by our partner WAZIUP. The WaziGate gateway is fully autonomous as it can run without Internet connectivity by embedding all the required data processing and intelligence needed to translate the raw data from sensors to simple irrigation recommendations to small farmers. Agricultural models/knowledge as well as a multiple knowledge stream approach will be integrated into the IoT gateway.
WHAT IS THE INTEL-IRRIS STARTER-KIT?
INTEL-IRRIS proposes a starter-kit to demonstrate the “Intelligent Irrigation in-the-box” concept using the Edge-Computing approach provided by the WaziGate. The mains features of WaziGate are (1) to offer an embedded web interface that can be accessed from any smartphone and (2) provide the possibility for specific embedded applications to be deployed (so-called WaziApp). INTEL-IRRIS is also developing a dedicated embedded application to integrate all the intelligence needed to perform advanced calibration procedures, taking into account sensor parameters, soil parameters, plant parameters and environmental parameters. More information on this dedicated Irrigation WaziApp will be provided soon in next Newsletters!
All these components are provided as a starter-kit ready to be deployed by smallholders in a participatory approach with a Smallholder Piloting Program. In a first phase, a limited number of selected piloting farms will test the starter-kit and will provide their feedbacks to improve the proposed system before the larger scale test campaign.
CAN I BUILD MY OWN INTEL-IRRIS STARTER-KIT?
Yes of course! The whole INTEL-IRRIS project is to allow for tech enthusiasts and entrepreneurs to build their own INTEL-IRRIS starter-kit and even improve and customize it for their own purposes. Our GitHub repository contains the list of hardware parts and all the code and tutorial materials to build the INTEL-IRRIS starter-kit.
Nov. 26th, 2021. PRIMA Intel-IrriS GitHub has been created! All software for soil sensor IoT platform with their associated tutorial resources will be available.
The DOCUMENTS section of INTEL-IRRIS web site also lists all presentations, tutorial materials and instructional YouTube videos to allow tech enthusiasts and entrepreneurs to dig into the technology building blocks provided by INTEL-IRRIS. Here is for instance the instructional video for building the IoT hardware platform, but there are many more: ordering the PCBs, building the INTEL-IRRIS WaziGate,…
WHAT IS EDGE-COMPUTING AND WHY INTEL-IRRIS IS ADOPTING THIS APPROACH?
Edge-Computing is a technology enabling complex data processing as close as possible to the end-user, reducing the need of Internet connectivity and remote servers. This technology is gaining great interest, especially to deploy applications in remote and rural areas and we have prepared an interview video to explain this concept and what it can bring to INTEL-IRRIS.
WHERE CAN I GET INFORMATION ON THE COMPLEX SOIL-WATER-PLANT-ATMOSPHERE ECOSYSTEM TO BETTER UNDERSTAND THE CHALLENGES?
There are many resources on the web. INTEL-IRRIS also relies on these resources and proposes a link section where a number of resources have been selected.
In addition, as indicated previously, INTEL-IRRIS consortium includes agriculture experts who produced for INTEL-IRRIS a number of tutorial slides for the first webinar on irrigation in small-scale agriculture and the second webinar on Irrigation 4.0. You can check all these very didactic presentations in the SEMINARS/TALKS section.
More generally, we are preparing contents for 2 online courses: one on the IT part and one on the AGRI part. These courses will present in a more structured way all tutorial and training materials to better guide the reader in a step-by-step approach. Stay tuned!
WHAT ARE THE NEXT NEWSLETTERS?
We will release Newsletters every 4 months. The next Newsletters will highlight:
- The low-cost soil moisture sensors of the INTEL-IRRIS starter-kit and the advanced calibration results from our agriculture experts: IRD (France), INRA Rabat and INRA CRRA Settat (Morocco), UMAB (Algeria)
- The embedded Irrigation WaziApp to add intelligence and take into account a larger variety of parameters
- Highlights on the Smallholder Piloting Program, how INTEL-IRRIS local partners will work with selected piloting farms and the feedbacks collected from the Smallholder Piloting Program
- How disruptive AI technologies will be integrated into the INTEL-IRRIS framework
- … and much more!
HOW TO SUBSCRIBE TO NEWSLETTERS, ASK QUESTIONS AND PROVIDE FEEDBACKS TO NEWSLETTERS?
You can subscribe to the INTEL-IRRIS Newsletter using our mailchimp form.
You can ask questions and provide feedbacks for each Newsletter by using the Reply feature on our Post section. The Post associated to this NEWSLETTER#1 is: https://intel-irris.eu/this-is-intel-irris-newsletter-1