Smart Irrigation V2
Purpose
To programmatically close the sensor to prescription loop created in https://lite-farm.atlassian.net/wiki/x/FYBtW through a set of manual processes in order to make pivot irrigation more efficient and effective in an increasingly dry world.
Stakeholders
Sean Smukler
Lewis Baarda (Farming Smarter)
Mark Johnson (Ensemble Scientific)
Morten Kals (Ensemble Scientific)
Michele Konschuh (University of Lethbridge)
Irrigated farmers TBD
Grants involved
RDAR (May 2024 - April 2027)
Release window
Winter CY2025, by May 1st 2025
New scope (not rolled over from V1)
Requirements defined in V1 that are relevant in V2 can be found here: Requirements (look for ‘V2’ in the version columns).
New requirements specific to Smart Irrigation V2 can be found below:
Epic | User story | Additional context |
---|---|---|
Refactor sensor architecture | As a user I want to be able to look over historical data for any period where my sensors where gathering in field data so that I can learn from the data that I’ve generated | Areas to investigate here:
|
Crop data | As a farmer growing a particular crop I want LiteFarm to know the water needs for that crop by crop stage so that the irrigation prescription recommendations are in line with optimizing my crop | We will need to collect at least the following data for all crops identified in the diagram from https://lite-farm.atlassian.net/wiki/spaces/LITEFARM/pages/1487175681:
Also see Smart irrigation | V2. |
Weather data | As a farmer using autonomous irrigation where weather is the primary input into irrigation decisions I want weather data to be recent and hyperlocal so that the irrigation prescription recommendations are in line with optimizing my crop | Also see the diagram from Smart irrigation | V2. This is an example of weather data from https://lite-farm.atlassian.net/wiki/spaces/LITEFARM/pages/1180499971 which took place in Enchant, AB. |
Additional pivot support | As a farmer using a particular brand of pivot I want to know that LiteFarm autonomous irrigation prescriptions support my pivot type before adopting the software so that I don’t waste my time | Instructions for converting irrigation prescriptions to “.vri” to support Zimmatic pivots can be found here: Working with VRI files However, this will need to be expanded to support additional pivot brands once the sites have been defined here: https://lite-farm.atlassian.net/wiki/spaces/LITEFARM/pages/1487175681 |
Things to be investigated
Not exhaustive by any means!
Also see:
https://lite-farm.atlassian.net/wiki/spaces/LITEFARM/pages/1158873089 for general information about irrigation
Sensor Q&A for mostly answered questions about sensors generally and ESCI’s sensors and protocols specifically
https://lite-farm.atlassian.net/wiki/spaces/LITEFARM/pages/1158873089/Irrigation+Q+A#General-notes-to-be-categorized for lots of notes that should be reviewed and categorized
Question | Answer | Notes |
---|---|---|
How does LiteFarm begin to support layers? |
| See Layers V1.0. |
For sensors at the same lat / long but with multiple depths, how should we be visualizing those depths? |
| See Sensor Q&A | How do we link up sensor_reading_types with a depth via csv upload? . Suggest overlaying different depths on the same x-axis (time) so you can see the impact of irrigation events at different depths. |
Should we refactor “temperature” to be “soil_temperature”? |
| Right now “temperature” is a partner_reading_type. However, this actually indicates “soil temperature” and may become confusing as we begin to use air temperature as well. |
Additional resources
See Smart irrigation | Reading list.
The successful proposal: