Agritechnology doesn’t have to be difficult or complicated.

We’ve built a business around this belief, and it’s not just for the sake of improving or ‘disrupting’ existing technology. Growers need technology to be simple and streamlined, because they’ve got more than enough on their plates, working to make sure we’ve got enough on ours.

Still, when we talk about technology, we tend to use shorthand. We’ve used “smart sensing tech” to explain the hardware, network, and cloud platform we provide agribusinesses with to monitor the real-time state of their crops and environment. We’ve used “agriculture” to describe a range of contexts, from greenhouse to arable, vertical to cold store, processing to transport and retail.

As with any conversation, as we talk to our customers and potential customers, we learn how to better express ourselves, and better explain the technology we’re developing.

Metrics, not sensors

30MHz technology is about a great deal more than just sensors: it’s about scalable, reliable architecture, flawless connectivity, and usable crop-level analytics that help teams work together to make the best decisions for their businesses, farm to fork.

Nevertheless, in our early days, we’d often find ourselves in conversations with [potential] customers trying to understand which sensors they wanted. That ended quickly.

The difference may feel negligible to some, but it’s really not about which sensors a grower needs. It’s about the insights they need, metrics they want to capture.

Consider the Pointed Microclimate Sensor

Developed with input from growers, the pointed microclimate sensor can capture plant temperature of individual crops, ambient temperature and relative humidity (RH).

Luckily for growers, we’re not just a sensor company.

The ZENSIE platform is designed to make the most of customers’ agridata. With the data captured by the pointed microclimate sensor, calculations in the cloud can provide insights on dew point, vapour pressure deficit (VPD), absolute humidity (AH), humidity deficit and the absolute difference between air temperature and dewpoint.

Seven metrics, one sensor. That’s the power of a cloud platform.

(And we’re adding new calculations, based on customer needs).

Customers can see their crop metrics in various forms, including:

Alerts

Graphs

Heatmaps

Customers can also benchmark and compare metrics, set in-graph targets, and view data in context with external data sources like climate control, traceability and shelf-life.