V.DIG.2022 - Adoption of Wildeye Ag-technology at Romani Pastoral Co’s Redbank Station

Summary

The project was undertaken to demonstrate the range and application of ag tech products available to MLA’s membership, with the ultimate goal of increasing adoption of such technologies to improve the industry’s productivity. A range of products were deployed at assets within the Redbank pastoral operation. Data was collected in-field by Wildeye hardware, transmitted to a central server via pre-existing cellular wireless technologies, and viewed via Wildeye’s apps and web applications.

Objectives

The objective was to demonstrate the capacity of digital technology on a working farm and show how the property owner can benefit from accessing and analysing data collected remotely.
Specifically, this project will supply, install and make operational the following digital components:
1.) 2 Water trough sensors
2.) 1 Water tank sensor
3.) 1 Diesel fuel tank sensor
4.) 4 Grain silo level sensors
5.) 1 Weather station
6.) 1 Rain gauge
7.) 3 Water flow monitoring devices.
This project will also have training and sign-off acquired from Romani Pastoral Company’s General Manager and MLA’s innovation and Events Coordinator.

Key findings

The Wildeye installations at Romani Pastoral Company properties have proven successful and useful in a range of applications, including:
• identifying leaks in pressurised water supplies to stock tanks
• managing stock water supplies
• understanding weather patterns and rainfall records.


A number of technical issues have been encountered, including:
• Venting issues with the diesel tank sensor, resulting in extended periods where diesel storage data is believed to be incorrect.
• Reliability issues with ultrasonic sensors at 3 of 4 grain storage silos (noting that the silo where radar technology was used had reliable data).
• Transient connectivity issues at one installation.

The results indicate that connectivity is generally not a constraint to deployment of 'internet of things:

• type ag technologies'
• They also highlight the importance of sensor selection and quality, with some of the sensors installed proving to be unsuited to the applications despite the sensor manufacturer’s claims (e.g. ultrasonic sensor types measuring grain levels in silo’s).

Benefits to industry

Digital AgTech providers often make fictious claims about where their technologies and solutions are up to. Digital farms play an important role in vexing these claims and determining what Red Meat Producers can deploy today and the value proposition behind each. The benefit of this project is the demonstration to producers that remote monitoring in areas where traditional connectivity is limited or non-existent is now commercially viable and, most importantly, reliable. The development of the wireless trough sensor provides producers with another option for trough monitoring solution, specifically targeting remote locations.

MLA action

The learnings from the Romani Digital demonstration farm project has helped shape the MLA Digital Agriculture business plan. A need has been identified to further test AgTech which is market ready with producers in real world situations to identify the use cases and value propositions of the solutions beyond the simple demonstration of them. This is guiding the current and future MLA investments in this space.

Future research

Future research and development should be focused on expanding the wireless sensor ecosystem. In particular, water quality and animal tracking. Additional research in data analytics of the collected data, to explore water consumption and animal health, is also of significant interest.