Data-driven techniques for agriculture can help farmers reduce waste, increase farm output and ensure sustainability for the environment. The key enabler for such techniques is an always-on connected IoT system that can sense the different characteristics of the farm and generate short-term and long-term actionable insights for the farmer. Yet building such a system is very challenging due to sparse Internet connectivity and lack of reliable power sources. This is further exacerbated by weather variability that stresses the system in numerous ways. We discuss how we built and deployed Farmbeats in the face of these challenges. We hope our experiences will aid researchers who are beginning to explore deployments in farming or other weakly connected, power-starved scenarios, such as construction, oil fields, mining, and others.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Data-driven techniques for agriculture can help farmers reduce waste, increase farm output and ensure sustainability for the environment. The key enabler for such techniques is an always-on connected IoT system that can sense the different characteristics of the farm and generate short-term and long-term actionable insights for the farmer. Yet building such a system is […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"featured_media":0,"template":"","meta":{"msr-url-field":"","msr-podcast-episode":"","msrModifiedDate":"","msrModifiedDateEnabled":false,"ep_exclude_from_search":false,"_classifai_error":"","footnotes":""},"msr-content-type":[3],"msr-research-highlight":[],"research-area":[13556,13552,13547],"msr-publication-type":[193715],"msr-product-type":[],"msr-focus-area":[],"msr-platform":[],"msr-download-source":[],"msr-locale":[268875],"msr-post-option":[],"msr-field-of-study":[],"msr-conference":[],"msr-journal":[],"msr-impact-theme":[261670],"msr-pillar":[],"class_list":["post-474747","msr-research-item","type-msr-research-item","status-publish","hentry","msr-research-area-artificial-intelligence","msr-research-area-hardware-devices","msr-research-area-systems-and-networking","msr-locale-en_us"],"msr_publishername":"","msr_edition":"","msr_affiliation":"","msr_published_date":"2017-6-1","msr_host":"","msr_duration":"","msr_version":"","msr_speaker":"","msr_other_contributors":"","msr_booktitle":"","msr_pages_string":"","msr_chapter":"","msr_isbn":"","msr_journal":"ACM GetMobile: Mobile Computing and Communications","msr_volume":"21","msr_number":"","msr_editors":"","msr_series":"","msr_issue":"","msr_organization":"","msr_how_published":"","msr_notes":"","msr_highlight_text":"","msr_release_tracker_id":"","msr_original_fields_of_study":"","msr_download_urls":"","msr_external_url":"","msr_secondary_video_url":"","msr_longbiography":"","msr_microsoftintellectualproperty":1,"msr_main_download":"","msr_publicationurl":"https:\/\/dl.acm.org\/citation.cfm?doid=3131214.3131220","msr_doi":"","msr_publication_uploader":[{"type":"url","viewUrl":"false","id":"false","title":"https:\/\/dl.acm.org\/citation.cfm?doid=3131214.3131220","label_id":"243109","label":0}],"msr_related_uploader":"","msr_attachments":[{"id":0,"url":"https:\/\/dl.acm.org\/citation.cfm?doid=3131214.3131220"}],"msr-author-ordering":[{"type":"user_nicename","value":"Zerina Kapetanovic","user_id":42303,"rest_url":"https:\/\/www.microsoft.com\/en-us\/research\/wp-json\/microsoft-research\/v1\/researchers?person=Zerina Kapetanovic"},{"type":"user_nicename","value":"Deepak Vasisht","user_id":40231,"rest_url":"https:\/\/www.microsoft.com\/en-us\/research\/wp-json\/microsoft-research\/v1\/researchers?person=Deepak Vasisht"},{"type":"text","value":"Jongho Won","user_id":0,"rest_url":false},{"type":"user_nicename","value":"Ranveer Chandra","user_id":33344,"rest_url":"https:\/\/www.microsoft.com\/en-us\/research\/wp-json\/microsoft-research\/v1\/researchers?person=Ranveer Chandra"},{"type":"text","value":"Mark Kimball","user_id":0,"rest_url":false}],"msr_impact_theme":["Resilience"],"msr_research_lab":[199565],"msr_event":[],"msr_group":[714067],"msr_project":[881235,239387],"publication":[],"video":[],"download":[],"msr_publication_type":"article","related_content":{"projects":[{"ID":881235,"post_title":"Project FarmVibes","post_name":"project-farmvibes","post_type":"msr-project","post_date":"2022-10-06 08:00:00","post_modified":"2024-07-29 09:55:45","post_status":"publish","permalink":"https:\/\/www.microsoft.com\/en-us\/research\/project\/project-farmvibes\/","post_excerpt":"Democratizing digital tools for sustainable agriculture As one of the biggest contributors to climate change, agriculture, along with land use degradation and deforestation, account for about a quarter of the global GHG emissions and consumes about 70% of the world\u2019s freshwater resources. Agriculture is also amongst the most impacted by climate change. Farmers depend on predictable weather for their farm management practices, and unexpected weather events, e.g., high heat, floods, etc. leaves them unprepared to…","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.microsoft.com\/en-us\/research\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/msr-project\/881235"}]}},{"ID":239387,"post_title":"FarmBeats: AI, Edge & IoT for Agriculture","post_name":"farmbeats-iot-agriculture","post_type":"msr-project","post_date":"2016-06-16 20:10:17","post_modified":"2024-08-29 22:15:59","post_status":"publish","permalink":"https:\/\/www.microsoft.com\/en-us\/research\/project\/farmbeats-iot-agriculture\/","post_excerpt":"Our goal is to enable data-driven farming. We believe that data, coupled with the farmer's knowledge and intuition about his or her farm, can help increase farm productivity, and also help reduce costs. 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