Open-Platform Sensor Node for Agrivoltaics

Modern agricultural methods are adopting smart manufacturing concepts to meet the ever-increasing world demand for food. Real-time remote monitoring systems automatically measure and manage the production environment, while machine learning/ artificial intelligence algorithms are used to understand the complex intricacies of the many factors needed to maximize production yield. Thus, smart farming depends on data collected from the field, transmitted to a controller, curated, and analyzed. Actuators are then controlled to take action, such as adjusting irrigation or nutrient dosing. The need to power the newly integrated devices in the field has motivated the support of smart agrivoltaics. Smart agrivoltaics co-locates photovoltaic energy production with crop cultivation to promote sustainability. The problem is that existing smart agrivoltaics commercial solutions are proprietary, closed ecosystems; the user cannot modify or alter the system from sensor to actuator, limiting the usefulness for research. Meanwhile, open-sourced designs, such as those available freely through an internet search, tend to be more oriented toward the hobbyist; various functions may not work together, and there has been little system-oriented design. Thus, these open-source designs are also unsuitable for research. This paper presents a flexible, customizable, reliable sensor node and open platform. Off-the-shelf commercial sensor modules were used to increase accessibility for prototyping, while system and firmware design was structured in a way to allow robust operation yet also enable easy customization.