Due to its unique geography, Taiwan is ideal for the growth of a wide range of plants and has established a reputation for quality vegetables, fruits, and flowers via long-term research and development and is known as the Fruit Kingdom or Orchid Kingdom. To further improve Taiwan’s agricultural competitiveness, local organizations have applied computer and internet technologies to monitor and analyze agricultural procedures. In order to experiment and improve soils, fertilizers, and plant nutrition of farmland, a southern research and extension station recently intended to upgrade its older diagnosis system for a system with greater performance and wireless communication.
When approached about a solution to their hardware infrastructure Advantech suggested that it would be too complicated to make any hardware changes (or to insert new hardware) in a wired system, therefore a wireless structure with an easy installation procedure would be the best solution to the problem. Advantech’s integrated wireless function WSN technology, and ADAM-2000 series (which contains ZigBee (IEEE 802.15.4) standard & Modbus support) could aid research stations quickly build an infrastructure for greenhouse applications.
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A solution was built using three of Advantech’s wireless devices: ADAM-2017 Analog Input Node, ADAM-2510 Wireless Router Node, and an ADAM-2520 Wireless Modbus RTU Gateway. These devices provide a better signal transmission and deliver soil sensor data from the pH sensors in the greenhouse to the control labs which may located hundreds of meters away. The ADAM wireless series also performs low duty cycles and is energy saving: two alkaline batteries can sustain a device for entire year, thereby eliminating the trouble of changing batteries.
Advantech’s ADAM-2000 series has not only replaced the older slower system, but has also delivered excellent energy saving features. The industrial protocol support allows system suppliers to provide integrated solutions on stable signal transmission, and the overall excellency of Advantech’s wireless solution is now being used in many more greenhouse system projects.
