Vineyard Field Monitoring Systems Update
March 23, 2011 One of the most talked about ag technology products in recent years has been the development of remote field monitoring systems. The most advanced of these systems deliver climate and other data from your vineyards directly to your personal computer on a real-time basis.
What Do They Do?
Field monitoring systems can be equipped with sensors to record climate data (temperatures, relative humidity, rainfall, wind speed, and solar radiation) from which you can calculate evapotranspiration, growing degree-days, or create alert/notification points (i.e. a frost warning system).
In addition, these systems can be equipped with sensors to record soil moisture levels, which can form the basis of deciding when to irrigate. Once you have decided on an irrigation schedule, the more advanced of these systems can implement your schedule by opening and closing valves, starting a pump, then monitoring and recording filter pressures during the irrigation events. In addition, treatment timing for powdery mildew can be adjusted using a calculated Powdery Mildew Index based on in-canopy temperature measurements.
A Brief History
Monitoring what is going on in a vineyard began more than 40 years ago when we installed tensiometers or gypsum blocks to measure soil moisture levels. On a weekly basis during the growing season, we walked into the vineyard, wrote down the current instrument readings, then returned to the office or pickup to add the new data to our graph and decide when we needed to irrigate.
About 20 years ago, the “data logger” was introduced for general commercial use. This allowed field data to be recorded more frequently (i.e. once a day, once an hour). Now, the person walking into the vineyard each week could download a week’s worth of information, which would then be transferred to a PC to generate a graphic output.
In the last five to 10 years, remote downloading of field loggers is being done using cell modems, radio telemetry, or a combination of radio telemetry and cell phones. Loggers are regularly downloaded (every 15 minutes or more frequently) to a website, which we can access from our computer. In addition to simple data loggers, we now have “smart” data loggers, which are more like a micro-computer that can take actions for us in the field such as operating valves and pumps or calling on our cell phone to provide us with low temperature/frost warning alerts.
Field Monitoring Strategies And Systems
Today, growers can select from a broad range of field monitoring approaches depending on the amount of information needed from the field and how current the data needs to be.
If the only need is for soil moisture data once per week, then installing Watermark sensors or tensiometers and reading them each week will work fine. If there is a need for more frequent data recording, then a data logger can be added and downloaded once per week.
If the speed of data transfer is important, then one moves to the systems that utilize cell modems to upload data to a website. For farming situations where data is needed from more than one location, the most economical system to select is one that has a reliable radio telemetry capability with remote “nodes.” The “nodes” (up to two miles away) communicate with the “base station,” which in turn uses a cell modem to communicate with the Internet. The advantage of a “distributed node” system is that there is only one cell phone bill each month.
Everything that I have discussed so far has to do with moving data from the field to a grower’s PC. An important additional consideration is the ability to communicate actions from your PC to the field. The more advanced systems provide the capability to control irrigation valves, start/stop pumps on a pre-set schedule, control fertilizer injections, back flush filters, etc.
PC Software And Website Capabilities
Most of the field data logger systems (without cell modems) require software to be installed on a PC to transfer and view the data.
For the cell modem/Internet systems, a manufacturer developed website provides data storage and the ability to view data. The capabilities of the website are as important as the selection of the field hardware. The websites for some of the manufacturers are pretty simplistic with limited capabilities. On the other hand, some manufacturers are quite “flashy” in their graphics and get carried away with projections for vineyard activities (i.e. projecting irrigation needs). A grower should understand what is going on in a website calculation before using the results.
Costs
There are two components of costs — one is the initial capital investment and the second is the monthly cost to download and store data (i.e. cell phone to website). Capital costs depend on the type of system needed, the equipment manufacturer and the number of sensors added to the system.
For a simple once per week, grower-read soil moisture approach, the capital cost would be around $500 with no monthly cost. For a basic, cell modem equipped field station (reading soil moisture only) the capital cost would be around $2,000 with around $30 in monthly costs. For a cell modem, “distributed node” system the entry capital cost would be around $3,500 with around $60 in monthly cost.
As we look at the use of current technology in our vineyard operations, we need to remember that all of the approaches described above are viable and effectively used today. The questions are … how much data do you want and how fast do you want to receive it? If you are considering using some of the newer technologies, be sure to talk to some current users or a consultant who has some knowledge and experience with these technologies. And remember that existing technologies may just as well meet your needs.
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