I-Corps: Pulsepod: Bringing the Cloud Down to Earth

越来越少的人在更严格的资源限制下管理更多的土地。水和劳动力是最受限制的资源，但种植者也面临着更多的时间要求，更复杂的作业，更不确定的天气。最普遍的是，种植者聘请顾问经常检查田地并做出决定。这些顾问越来越依赖传感器数据来确定访问哪些油田的优先顺序。有测量天气和土壤湿度的硬件，例如调度灌溉，其中一些硬件具有将数据卸载到云数据库供用户查看的能力。硬件公司往往专注于销售单一的传感器--如土壤水分--而不是为所有种植者提供完整的解决方案--S决策需要。这项拟议的创新将现场传感器数据与卫星遥感和天气预报相结合，以提供警报、通知和关于即将进行的工作的建议。由于拟议的传感器集线器是灵活的，决策支持选项的种类比其竞争对手更多。这个i-Corps团队开发了一种低成本的蜂窝功能吊舱(PulSepod)，比市场上同类产品的价格低10倍。PulSepod是一款小型、低功耗、低成本的传感器平台，专为全球环境科学应用而设计。各种自我描述传感器可以插入主集线器来解决各种问题，通常集中在植物对环境的反应上。数据通过蜂窝、WiFi甚至卫星网络传输到基于云的软件平台，以实现实时远程决策支持。现有的技术昂贵，难以使用，而且没有很好地与互联网整合。相比之下，PulSepod经济实惠，易于使用，而且明确设计用于将数据上传到云中。

Increasingly, fewer people are managing more land under tighter resource restrictions. Water and labor top the list of constrained resources, but growers also face more demands on their time, more complex operations, and more uncertain weather. Most generally, growers hire consultants to frequently check fields and make decisions. Increasingly, these consultants rely on sensor data to prioritize which fields to visit. There exists hardware for measuring weather and soil moisture, for example to schedule irrigation, and some of this hardware has the capability of offloading data to a cloud database for users to view. Hardware companies are often focused on selling a single sensor - such as soil moisture - rather than providing a complete solution to all a grower?s decision-making needs. The proposed innovation synthesizes in-field sensor data with satellite remote sensing and weather forecasts to provide alerts, notices, and advice on upcoming jobs to do. Because the proposed sensor hub is flexible, the variety of decision support options is larger than its competitors.This I-Corps team has developed a low-cost cellular-enabled pod (Pulsepod) that is 10x less expensive than comparable products on the market. Pulsepod is a small, low-power, low-cost sensor platform designed for global applications in the environmental sciences. A variety of self-describing sensors can be plugged into the main hub to address a variety of questions, generally focused on the responses of plants to their environment. Data is transmitted over cellular, wifi, or even satellite networks onto a cloud-based software platform to allow real-time remote decision support. Existing technologies are expensive, hard to use, and not well integrated to the internet. By contrast, Pulsepod is economical, easy to use, and explicitly designed to get data onto the cloud.