Superhands soil sensors in a global competition – 2nd place!

For the past two years Superhands has offered mini-weather stations and soil sensors for more efficient agriculture, and better planning of road infrastructure maintenance. The installation of traditional ground sensors is often troublesome, time consuming, and limited due to the need for cables. With this in mind, and with feedback from our partners, the development of a wireless, small-scale soil sensor has been in the works for a while.

Through the Thomas Johann Seebeck Institute of Electronics at TalTech we found out that Bayer, the global chemical company, announced a competition for the creation of a wireless soil temperature and humidity sensor the size of a grain of corn. We presented our vision and solution to Bayer, and made it to the finals (among the TOP 7), where we were competing with universities, start-ups, and large international companies from Germany, the USA, Australia and Greece.

Our solution was a wireless sensor that works in tandem with our mini-weather stations. Wireless sensors are not quite revolutionary these days, but the competition requirement (size comparable to a grain of corn) set enormous limitations to

• the design of electronics,
• production process and quality assurance,
• as well as to the battery life of the device,
• and signal coverage.

Solving these tasks coincides ideally with the key competencies of Superhands, so we found a suitable technical compromise and were able to create a solution that meets the dimensions criteria, as well as the other conditions of the competition.

Description of our sensor

• Dimensions: 13.5 x 10.3 x 6.2 mm
• Weight: 2 grams

Measuring parameters:

• Soil temperature (± 0.5 ° C)
• Soil humidity (± 5%)
• Identification of the installation depth
• Identification of location with a smartphone

The sensor uses Bluetooth technology to transmit data, with an initial range of 10 m (possible up to 100 m in the future) and a current battery life of 12 months.

In addition, we created a data visualization and analytics platform for the competition and improved our existing mini-weather stations.

You can read more about the competition here: Bayer Grants4Tech SeedSensor Challenge.

• To use the award money and experience from the competition for the further development of sensors
• To find additional fields of use for this technology
• To test the sensors in the environment of their actual use
• To offer sensors to end users both in Estonia and elsewhere in Europe

If anyone has any questions about this technology, or any other of our offerings, feel free to contact us!