FABI and Innovation Africa @UP expands IoT sensor network with Engineering. 4.0 2021-07-21
FABI and Innovation Africa @UP are partnering with Engineering 4.0. to create a digital twin of its facilities. Earlier this month the team added most significant batch of LoRaWAN sensors to date. LoRaWAN is a low-power, low-bandwidth technology suited to IoT sensors and can provide coverage to a large area. The consignment of 80 air temperature, relative humidity and soil moisture sensors will accelerate the digitization of research at FABI and the FABI Biocontrol Centre and Nursery. These sensors will collect data relevant to ongoing research at FABI, as well as monitor essential facilities. This multi-disciplinary approach provides complementary research solutions for remote sensing in collaboration with the Department of Civil Engineering and Engineering 4.0 (Prof. Wynand Steyn, André Broekman, Johannes Steyn, Nishkar Naraindath) and FABI (Prof. Bernard Slippers, Dr Quentin Santana, Dr Osmond Mlonyeni, Prof. Almuth Hammerbacher and various other researchers). The evolving IoT project sees knowledge transfer to students and researchers between departments and establishes best practice and technical guidelines as this 4IR technology is deployed and developed.