Illuminum Greenhouses™ Kenya

Introducing Farmshield™: Africa’s first complete smart farming solution for smallholder farmers

With Farmshield™ you can remotely control your farm from your mobile phone and dashboard while getting real-time information on fertigation and irrigation needs for your crop. Farmshield™ takes the guesswork and uncertainty away from farming and makes it smart and intelligent by using off the grid sensors that measure different parameters and sends this data to our cloud where we analyze and send real-time alerts and advice to farmers via SMS, Email or App alerts.

It’s really easy to use! you just buy our FarmShield online, we deliver, install and set up your cloud access to allow you manage your farm from our app, web portal or even USSD platform.

The Farmspears™

The Farmshield™ talks to 2 stand-alone sensors we call Farmspears™ due to the nature of its installation where you spear it to the ground. A Farmspear™ houses the following sensors and equipment;

1. NPK Nutrient Sensor(Nitrogen, Phosphorus, Potassium)
2. Soil Moisture Sensor
3. Soil Temperature Sensor
4. Air Humidity Sensor
5. Air Temperature Sensor
6. Light Intensity Sensor
7. Water flow meter to monitor irrigation
8. Solar Panel and Battery

The Farmspears™ collect data on the state of the soil such as the soil moisture, farm ambient temperature, light intensity and humidity then sends it to the Farmshield.

Farmspears about to be speared to the ground to begin taking readings.

The Farmshield™

The Farmshield™ is the brain of the farm and shields the farm from any adverse conditions. It combines data from both spears, checks if anything has exceeded the required levels in the farm and if so, takes the necessary action to correct it. The Farmshield™ makes smart decisions on the farm such as;

1. Opening and closing the irrigation system to let water flow into the farm if the soil moisture sensors report low soil moisture levels.
2. Actuating on greenhouse fans to evacuate humidity in the greenhouse if the air humidity sensors report high humidity levels.
3. Opening and closing of the greenhouse side ventilation if the air temperature sensor reports high-temperature levels.
4. Timely alerts on low or high levels of Nitrogen, Phosphorus and Potassium in the soil.

By allowing the Farmshield to make decisions at the farm level without relying on the cloud, we ensure the farmers’ crops are protected from system failures during loss of connectivity which is a common occurrence in rural farms.

Farmshield with an automatic valve that controls the water to be irrigated.

All the data collected is stored on an inbuilt memory and is sent to the cloud for further analysis and processing via the internet depending on the location of the farm and connectivity levels.

The Cloud

This is where all the magic happens! All the data sent to the cloud by the Farmshield is stored, analysed and displayed on our dashboard which farmers interact with to provide information. The dashboard displays real-time information of your farm to the second and is accessible by our app,  web portal or USSD.

The dashboard is a complete turnkey system with tiles on managing your Farmshield device, placing orders for farm inputs, ordering trucks to collect your harvests to even raising invoices for payment by your customers. Some of our beta pilot farmers call it; “the complete farming management portal”. 

With just 1 click, you can access information on your irrigation and fertigation cycles, harvest cycles and even payment cycles opening up other advantages to farmers such as financing from lenders due to evidence of farming experience and income.

While it is common that not all our farmers are able to access the internet with a smartphone or laptop, we have created a USSD platform that farmers simply dial on their feature phones and access all their farming information as well as even configure their devices.

Farmspears installed just outside Kiambu Town.

Our Story

We didn’t just start writing code or building boards, we started as a greenhouse construction company. When we asked our farmers how their greenhouses were doing, 95% of them had major challenges controlling irrigation and knowing what to do with their greenhouse. The response was the same also for farmers without greenhouses but were using irrigation systems like drip and sprinkler on their open farms.

We then started researching and found out that sensors would be a good solution for these farmers as it would automate some of these processes. However, when we tried ordering some of the existing solutions, there were some major setbacks;

1. They needed electricity mains to run them yet our farms were located in rural areas with no power.
2. They required 3G/4G/Wifi to send data to the cloud for farmers to be able to monitor their farm yet connectivity in rural Africa still falls low.
3. They were costly and expensive to ship to farms with farmers complaining about the affordability of the solution.

It then became clear that we had to build our solution from the ground up with constant feedback from smallholder farmers on what they needed most and could afford.

The Build

Version 1.0: 2014

Our first sensor device built-in 2014: Version 1.0

This was the very first design we built and tested with 7 farms around Nairobi. It was a simple and minimalistic design that ran on Arduino but was powered by electricity. It was made up of the following only;

1. Temperature sensor
2. Air Humidity sensor
3. Arduino board and screen
4. Soil moisture sensor
5. Automated solenoid valve for opening and closing water

We wanted to see if indeed there was potential for IoT to penetrate the base of the pyramid and indeed it did work but v1 had the following challenges;

1. It was powered by electricity mains so we couldn’t scale it to farms with no power.
2. Farmers wanted to also know the amount of water they had irrigated apart from just automating the water opening and closing.
3. Farmers wanted remote control to allow them to monitor their farm from anywhere.
4. The system was not able to accommodate multiple functions and so failures occurred frequently. To be honest, the code was not good enough. We needed to improve it.

Version 2.0: 2016

Version 2.0 Proof of concept in 2016.

Based on the learnings we had made from v1 and farmer feedback, we set out to build a system that had more sensors, powered by solar and better processing capabilities. This time, we used Raspberry pi and added in a flow meter sensor to give farmers the information they wanted to see through a sim card we installed in the system. Testing sites were increased to 16 across Kenya.

The results were encouraging, farmers were able to plan better with the water information while reducing water expenses on their farm by up to 60%. For the first time, we installed the device in rural farms due to the solar power capability we had added.

Despite this good progress, v2 had challenges which we still needed to improve on;

1. The sensors were wired all through the farm hence farmers would cut these wires frequently during weeding and harvesting.
2. The sensors we used were power-hungry and would deplete the battery during the night forcing the system to wait till morning in order to send data.
3. The system was too bulky and installation was complicated for farmers.
4. It was too costly to be implemented at scale.
5. Despite using a GSM Module with a Sim Card, connectivity was still not robust and strong enough

Version 3.0: 2018

Farmspear installed in Nakuru during testing

We partnered with BRCK in Nairobi to develop v3 and simplified our design to run with picoBRCK. Sensors were made wireless and communicated to a central hub which then pushed all the information to the cloud.

With v3, we introduced energy-efficient sensors with larger batteries which would power the system all through the night till day to recharge.

For the design, we worked with Catapult Design to develop a much more ruggedized and compact hardware casing that would ensure simplistic installation for our farmers while maintaining durability and affordability.

We added in a much smarter code with more sensor data which was able to provide much more valuable information to the farmers during the pilot phase. The picoBRCK allowed us to use 1 board for all the needs we had meaning we saved costs which were passed directly to the farmers.

v3 was the final near product we were confident farmers would use on their farms. It gave better and accurate data, it was faster, efficient and beyond all affordable but we still wanted to make it better.

After our testing phase, we agreed that as much as connectivity was low in rural areas, there was a positive indication that it was growing and at the same time, smartphone penetration in Kenya was already at 83% with costs of devices as low as $40 in the market.

The market situation had changed as compared to when we started building our solution in 2013.

We, therefore, decided to suspend rolling out v3 and build v4 that would bring on board the following powerful tools;

1. Use of the internet to collect unlimited data cheaply from the farm to the cloud and drop the SMS channel.
2. Introduce cloud analytics through Artificial Intelligence to provide predictive information to farmers based on sensor data.
3. Introduce Machine Learning technology in v4 to enable accurate fertigation and irrigation cycles in comparison with historical farming data.
4. Create a 1 stop online web portal that would contain all information and processes for farmers. 

The Future: Farmshield™ 4.0: 2020

Version 4.0 Design works from Catapult

We understand that our device must continually evolve to serve the needs of farmers across Sub Saharan Africa. We have therefore combined efforts with partners to further improve our system to catapult farmers to the digital age through our new device Farmshield™ 4.0.

This is going to be the most intelligent, easy to use and affordable system we have ever built and that’s why we are excited to bring to you Farmshield™ 4.0.

Farmshield™ 4.0 brings together two UK and three Kenyan partners to combine advanced sensor know-how, machine-learning analytics and knowledge of local needs to develop a novel system that will allow smallholder farmers to achieve high-yield greenhouse farming at low cost, increasing their food security and allowing them to move from subsistence farming to cash crops.

v4 is a low- cost greenhouse microclimate monitoring and management system that utilises soil sensors, climate and weather information to optimise irrigation and environmental conditions for specific crops.

The system analyses real-time information provided by soil sensors, mid-term weather information obtained from online service providers, climate information based on historical weather patterns, and combines these with the specific crop needs to determine the optimal watering pattern – maximising crop health and yield while keeping fertiliser and water consumption to a minimum.

Farmshield comes in 4 exciting packages:

LITE,BASIC, PREMIUM and PRO

LITE:

Suitable for users who simply want to automate water flow in their farms or facilities such as garden lawns pop ups or factory auto refilling of a water tank once it reaches half.

The data on the amount of water flowing is useful in budgeting and planning for water expenses. Users can access their data on the amount of water they have used on the dashboard as well as set the alert levels to trigger automatic opening and closing either based on time or the amount of water.

BASIC:

Developed for users growing irrigated crops under open field drip irrigation and do not have a greenhouse but wish to automate the redundant opening and closing of the irrigation system every morning and evening.

Basic comes with a Temperature-Humidity sensor to provide insights on the crop environment as well as weather patterns. The soil moisture sensor ensures the soil is always irrigated to the required pre set levels.

Suitable for crops such as: Leafy Vegetables i.e Cabbages, Lettuce and Spinach, Potatoes and Legumes.

PREMIUM:

Designed for a more detailed oriented user with the desire to archive maximum yield on minimum resources to turn profit. It’s our most sort after package by users in Africa. Unlike Basic which offers 1 Sensor per parameter, the premium package ensures you have 2 in order to reduce the margin of error by +/-0.01%. The duality in premium sensors guarantees users up to 99% Uptime. In the event 1 sensor is damaged, the other sensor can keep reporting as we send our technical team to site to fix the damaged sensors.

Additionally, Premium contains a Carbon (ii) Oxide-CO2 Sensor that ensures you monitor the concentration which greatly affects photosynthesis and in turn yield.

Suitable for Horticultural crops under greenhouses such as: Tomatoes, Capsicums, Cucumber

PRO:

Just like the name, we built this for the professionals in the industry in order to give them deeper insights and analytics to crop production that they would need to maintain quality and yield. The PRO version is powered by Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning Technology.

PRO is our only package equipped with the resourceful NPK sensor that allows users know the type and amount of fertilizers to apply to the crop. The NPK Sensor measures Nitrogen, Phosphorous and Potassium in the soil which the key nutrients needed by plants to grow

With PRO, you don’t have to worry about knowing when to apply the fertilizers, she tells you when the soil needs them and the amount needed. No guesswork!

PRO is suitable for users doing hydroponics, microgreens, high value export crops such as Basil, Chives and Aquaponic farmers.

The Artificial Intelligence in PRO is driven by  the sensor readings, our PRO device can automatically predict the trend of the farm and therefore course correct as a pilot avoiding collusion would do when in mid air.

For Example: If you grew tomatoes in a greenhouse of say 200sq.m installed with a PRO, she knows that it takes about 11,200L from planting to harvesting and when your system reports 10,000L of water irrigated, PRO automatically places an order for you at our marketplace informing us to prepare to collect your produce taking away the stress of having to worry about the market while ensuring we collect high quality produce therefore reducing post harvest losses across all PRO controlled farms.

PRO is designed for users growing crops under hydroponics, high value export crops under greenhouses such as Basil, Chives and even aquaponics farming.

v4 comes with FREE INSTALLATION* in all farms across East Africa only.

LITE: Farmshield™ only with AutoValve and flow meter sensor @Kes.45,000+16%VAT | $450+0%VAT

BASIC: Farmshield™ with AutoValve and flow meter sensor plus 1 Temperature Farmspear™@Kes75,000+16%VAT | $750+0%VAT

PREMIUM: Farmshield™ with AutoValve and flow meter sensor plus 2 Temperature Farmspears™@Kes.110,000+16%VAT | $1,100+0%VAT

PRO: Farmshield™ with AutoValve and flow meter sensor, 1 Temperature Farmspear and 1 NPK Farmspear @Kes.150,000+16%VAT | $1,500+0%VAT

*subject to terms and conditions