From Smart Home to Smart Office
to Smart Greenhouse

Farming is not usually perceived as especially high-tech, but the farmers of today are just a connected as the rest of us. For example, the combine harvesters of today—those monstrosities that mow down a field a wheat, separate the wheat from the chaff, and shoot a stream of wheat grain in the back of a truck—are GPS-controlled and do not need a driver! Just as intriguing is U.S. Patent No. 8,643,495 for an “Internet of Things Based Farm Greenhouse Monitor and Alarm Management System” from Chinese inventors Zehua Lan and Lixia Ma. The patent has 67 Forward Citations and a 2011 Priority Date.

More and more produce is being grown in greenhouse for several obvious reasons. Controlled growing conditions, a longer growing season, and a pest-free environment are just three. Even a small farm can have dozens of greenhouses, while a large farm can have hundreds. This patent creates a greenhouse monitoring and alarm-management system that is IoT based, provides real-time monitoring of the environmental parameters that affect the growth of crops in a greenhouse, and will fully integrate with ZigBee systems and components.

This technology covered by this patent is most comprehensive. It includes mobile inspection devices, data acquisition units, data receiving devices, data storage servers, and secure log-in by users. The system can automatically monitor and collect data on greenhouse environmental parameters such as air temperature, humidity, illumination, soil temperature and soil moisture. Using that data, it can also can automatically value and balance the critical value of each parameter for optimal growing performance. It can even determine the priority and validity of any warning or alarms produced by the system.

This patented technology utilizes ZigBee-chip integrated wireless sensors and data collection modules. It integrates remote inspection devices that enable a single person to monitor a hundred or more greenhouses from a central location, dramatically reducing labor costs and travel time between greenhouses by employees.

This figure from U.S. Patent No. 8,643,495 shows the overall architecture of the patent inventions and its integration into a ZigBee network.
(Click to Enlarge)

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