01 Feb Urban Cool Farm utilizes Farmio to save over 1400 hours

Summary

An indoor farm requires daily care to get optimum yield. Necessary measurements should be taken regularly, and timers for irrigation or other devices need to be scheduled well. Urban Cool Farm is a small-scale family-run indoor farm, and they have trouble with maintaining the daily operations of their facility. This case study addresses the challenges our customer Urban Cool Farm faced and how using Farmio helped them overcome these challenges.

Challenge

Urban Cool Farm is a small-scale family-run indoor farm producing microgreens and fresh herbs. The owners have good knowledge of growing plants; however, the farm is over 2 hours’ drive away from the owners’ home. They have timers and other controller devices for irrigation, lighting, and climate control in their indoor farm. However, they don’t have automation. They go to their facility every day, set the timers and other climate control devices, and then leave the farm. Thus, they have to go check every day if something was broken or unusual. They don’t know what happens in their farm and can’t intervene if timers or controllers malfunction until the next day. Considering the time spent on the road and labor, it is very costly to maintain an indoor farm. 

Solution

Farmio is a solution that integrates existing sensors and control devices at farms using very affordable and widely available communication equipment to enable remote connectivity. Farmio has granted Urban Cool Farm complete and accurate visibility and control over all environmental factors in their growth areas with real-time monitoring & automated control, custom rule sets, instant notifications, and data visualization. Urban Cool Farm has integrated Farmio to their facility to see the instant situation of their facility. Timers are scheduled by Farmio’s automation system. According to regular pH and EC measurement results, nutrients and acid-base regulators are added automatically to the irrigation tank, if necessary. If they are away from the facility and the environmental conditions fall outside the desired value range, Farmio sends them notification so that they can adjust the settings remotely.

Results

After they started using Farmio, Urban Cool Farm can monitor and control all aspects of their facility in real-time, from wherever they are, at all times. Farmio automated their facility and helped the owners save time and effort. They don’t need to take the 2 hours road every day now. They have more time for themselves and put less effort on the facility while increasing their yield.