INTEL-IRRIS NEWSLETTER #4
This is NEWSLETTER #4!
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Content of NEWSLETTER #4 – September 2023
- The new INTEL-IRRIS PCBs are available!
- WaziSense v2
- Integration of LoRaWAN sensors
- Towards WaziGate v3
- What are the next Newsletters?
- How to subscribe to Newsletters, ask questions and provide feedback to Newsletters?
THE NEW INTEL-IRRIS PCBs ARE AVAILABLE!
They are ready! Taking advantage of lessons learnt, the new PCBs improved the initial design and provide some new interesting features.
First, the new PCB designed by Jean-François Printanier from IRD and in collaboration with UPPA, allows simpler wiring of the soil humidity sensor, the watermark sensors and the soil temperature sensor. It also reduces the number of terminal blocks, thus reducing both the assembly time and the cost of the device.
The Gerber file for the raw PCB is freely available to allow third-party to order and manufacture them from PCB manufacturers. The indicative cost of the raw PCB is very low, about 0.6€/PCB (including shipping).
This new PCB also integrates by default a low-cost solar charging circuit to add solar panel and rechargeable batteries. The whole solar circuit appears on the back of the PCB (left side) as illustrated below.
The raw PCB will of course not have these additional electronic components. While it is possible to add these component manually, in practice it is not recommended as the components are small and manually soldering them is prone to errors. Instead, the fully assembled PCB with solar circuit will be ordered fully assembled from PCB manufacturer. The rendering of the final board is illustrated below. They will be available soon for our local partners!
In this option, only the Arduino ProMini microcontroller board would need to be provided and plugged onto the board by local partners.
Second, UPPA designed an improved PCB which integrates the LoRaWAN RAK3172 radio chip to provide full LoRaWAN connectivity. It also provides simpler wiring of sensors, similarly to the IRD’s PCB. There is no solar circuit however, as the main objective is to support full LoRaWAN connectivity for large-scale and worldwide deployment scenarios.
For both boards, the energy consumption in deep sleep mode is still below 5uA, allowing an autonomy of more than 2 years with 2 regular AA alkaline batteries!
The Gerber files for these new PCBs are available on INTEL-IRRIS’s GitHub. Also, check out the INTEL-IRRIS tutorial in building the low-cost soil humidity sensor platform that has been updated with assembly information for these new PCBs. For those who do not know how to get PCB manufactured, this Tutorial slides on building the INTEL-IRRIS platform. Annex-1: ordering & manufacturing the INTEL-IRRIS PCBs is for you.
WAZISENSE v2!
In addition to the INTEL-IRRIS dedicated PCBs presented previously, WAZIUP has finalized their WaziSense v2 board that features many additional interesting features for deploying a wide range of IoT applications: very low-power in deep sleep, solar charging capability, power pins for power hungry sensors, selection of input voltage for these power pins, on-board battery voltage monitor circuit, on-board prototyping area, …
WaziSense v2 will come fully assembled, including the microcontroller, and INTEL-IRRIS will produce some starter-kits based on it.
INTEGRATION OF LORAWAN SENSORS
INTEL-IRRIS is integrating third-party LoRaWAN sensors to enrich the irrigation decision-making process with more complex data sources such as local weather station. The SenseCap S2120 8-in-1 weather station from SeeedStudio is currently tested and will be integrated into the INTEL-IRRIS gateway’s dashboard. The objective is to deploy some local weather station in order to get better environmental parameters in order to further refine the irrigation decision-making process.
In order to better support the large variety of third-party LoRaWAN sensors, a proof-of-concept version of the INTEL-IRRIS WaziGate will be based on the RAK2245 or the new RAK5146 radio concentrator.
TOWARDS WAZIGATE v3
Our WAZIUP partner is actively preparing the next version of the WaziGate software to provide even more functionalities and an improved User Interface: integration of automation functionalities, support of OTAA (Over-The-Air-Activation), support of multiple radio concentrators for better LoRaWAN connectivity, better maintenance functionalities, …
Stay tuned for WaziGate v3 when it will be ready in INTEL-IRRIS distribution!
WHAT ARE THE NEXT NEWSLETTERS?
We will release Newsletters every 4 months. The next Newsletters will highlight:
- How disruptive AI technologies will be integrated into the INTEL-IRRIS framework?
- Highlights on the feedbacks collected from the Smallholder Piloting Program
- Example of embedded AI processing on collected soil humidity data
- … 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#4 is: https://intel-irris.eu/this-is-intel-irris-newsletter-4