Remote Visual Monitoring System for Tunnel Grown Crops

With soft fruit growers facing tighter margins due to changing economic circumstances and competition from low cost imports, it is imperative that growers can maximise their yield whilst maintaining a healthy . With longer growing seasons, disease can be a real problem affecting the health of the plant whilst also limiting the potential yield further impacting the grower. This project aims to provide a tool for the grower to remotely monitor a crop from anywhere with access to the internet. Using clusters of custom designed modules consisting of low-cost computing and imaging equipment, a system has been developed to monitor a crop throughout a growing season remotely. The system was able to power itself via renewable energy while capturing images of strawberry plants, inoculated with Phytophthora cactorum, via a fully customisable schedule for data collection, which reduced the risk of pathogen contamination of other crops by removing the requirement to physically visit the crop. The self-powered remote monitoring system is scalable by adding or removing clusters and lends itself to the collection of additional sensory data also.