The Squirrel Box aims to bring confidence to smart farming

It may not be as exciting as other fields, but agriculture is extremely important to mankind and technological advancements have increased yields, efficiency and productivity many times throughout history. All the evidence suggests that smart farming will be at the heart of the next big leap in technology and that will require trust in data. To achieve this goal, researchers from the University of Newcastle and the University of Nottingham developed the Squirrel Box.

The Squirrel Box is a small, remote device that measures key soil parameters, such as pH levels, moisture content, ambient conditions, and NPK (Nitrogen, Phosphorus, and Potassium) levels. This data is important in determining the health of the soil in a field. It is useful for protecting potential yields and also for tending the soil to achieve maximum productivity. The Squirrel Box can transmit its readings over long distances via LoRaWAN® to a WisGate Edge Lite 2, which is an eight-channel gateway that many boxes can connect to to provide a complete picture of soil health across an entire farm. An Arduino MKR WAN 1310 board monitors sensors and contains an integrated LoRa® transceiver.

But as the team at Squirrel Box point out in their article, smart farming requires trust. If farmers are to trust this data, they must be sure that it is accurate, reliable and tamper-proof. For this reason, they implemented decentralized communication robust enough to survive the failure of a single unit. They also turned to machine learning to validate the data and identify potential anomalies that could represent anything from a sensor problem to falsified data. This emphasis on trust makes farmers more likely to adopt smart farming techniques.