01 Feb PurpleLeaf minimizes crop loss with Farmio remote monitoring & automation system

Summary

An indoor farm requires different systems for irrigation, fertigation, lightings, and climate control. Each of these systems affects each other significantly. Thus, they need to be monitored and controlled continuously to optimize yield. PurpleLeaf is a newly found indoor farming business, who were suffering yield loss stemming from non-integrated systems. This case study addresses the challenges our customer PurpleLeaf faced and how ForFarming’s automation system helped them overcome these challenges. 

Challenge

PurpleLeaf is a family-run indoor farm. In their 96 m2 facility, there are 16 flood & drain type grow towers, each having 4 levels of 2 m2 trays. They have necessary LED lights, irrigation pipes, and timers for each production unit. They control irrigation via timers, and they have an automation system for timers and nutrient dosing to the irrigation tank. For climate control, they have temperature-humidity sensor. When climate is not at desired conditions, they have to adjust the settings of the dehumidifier or air conditioner. Even if their lighting system could be monitored or controlled remotely, other systems couldn’t. They didn’t know how any device affects others in the system. Because they couldn’t monitor and control everything when they are away, they couldn’t be sure whether the system was functioning correctly or not. When the system malfunctioned, they were experiencing decrease in yield. Last year, they have lost 27 percent of their potential harvest because of excessive irrigation and humidity. They needed a data-driven platform that can integrate all devices to each other and show PurpleLeaf instant situation of the system.

Solution

Farmio is a cloud-based, IoT-enabled software that transforms growing into a streamlined, smart process by providing all needs of plants with its automated monitoring and control system. PurpleLeaf has easily integrated Farmio to their existing system, with the help of ForFarming team and manual. Farmio automated PurpleLeaf’s lighting system with a simple communication device so that they can schedule it remotely. Their air conditioners and dehumidifiers were connected to the temperature-humidity sensors and automated to keep climate at desired level. Their irrigation and nutrient dosing systems were integrated to Farmio interface and can be controlled by Farmio. Farmio automatically records all measurements for irrigation, fertigation, lighting, and climate in their indoor farm and visualizes data in a single platform. 

Farmio sends PurpleLeaf instant notifications about all important developments at their farm. In this way, they can see if there is any change in environmental conditions or if their devices turn off and on.

Results

After PurpleLeaf started using Farmio, they are able to monitor their facility’s data history and see the effects of the changes they make. They can see how an equipment impacts environment and other devices. They can now compare the factors that affect production. Because they can now set their system according to data, both quantity and quality of their harvest increase importantly. Their harvest has been at optimum level with almost 0 loss, while they had lost 27 percent of their harvest in recent years.