Teralytic
Bringing IoT to Big Agriculture

Teralytic is a US-based precision agriculture firm creating a connected hardware and software platform to improve a farm’s yield by monitoring the growing conditions of the soil. By offering low-cost and easy-to-use NPK soil sensor hardware, each platform packed with sophisticated soil sensing capabilities allows crop data to be available on a farmer’s mobile device or laptop in nearly real time by using an efficient and robust wireless technology to transmit data to a central hub.

In this project, Tomorrow Lab first helped to rapidly translate the technical ambition of the client into a concise list of features, a functional proof-of-concept breadboard, and visualized product design. Later, using the proof-of-concept as our guide, we collected baseline data in our lab to gauge functionality requirements, and developed the product design to address reliability, aesthetic, and manufacturability concerns to a create a DFM-ready product.

01 — Proof of Concept

The overall goal of this phase of work was to develop a path to an affordable, manufacturable, reasonably accurate, and precise instrument cluster allowing measurement of these seven soil parameters: moisture, pH, EC (salts), oxygen, carbon dioxide, temperature, and light (above ground). We simplified the development process, researching custom engineered sensors, as well as high-end instruments to create a criteria for the more affordable ones. We created proof-of-concept sensors that acquire data through a local computer connection and validated their performance against the benchmark instruments.

02 — Sensor Validation & Electrical Engineering

We created a test rig holding a variety of 24” tall columns with different soil types (sandy, tropical, etc.) with and without fertilizer amendments for testing. The columns also allowed manipulation of the seven soil parameters listed above such as temperature modulation and moisture modulation testing. We wrote baseline firmware to log the gathered data from our instruments in the test rig, then compared this data to other data gathered from the high-end benchmark instruments in order to establish accuracy and precision performance. In addition, we tracked the predicted production cost of goods.

03 — Product Architecture & Industrial Design

We divided the product into two main parts: 1) a ‘head’ to sit above ground and house higher cost components such as the wireless technology, and 2) a ‘shaft’ to be embedded in the ground making contact with the soil and house the less expensive sensors. Since the Teralytic sensor is designed to appeal to corporate and big agricultural customers as an industrial farming tool, and the device seldom requires interaction with a person after installation, we took a rugged approach with the design. With metals and neutral-colored plastics throughout, we utilized bright orange pieces to indicate important touch points to the user, also making it identifiable in a crop field.

02 — Product Refinement and Pilot Production

After completing the POC, Tomorrow Lab re-engaged with Teralytic to refine the product design, engineering, and assembly strategy for a mass-producible version. We selected electronic and mechanical components for long life and durability, wrote robust firmware to work with the LoRa (Long Range Wireless) protocol, which connects the sensors on each spike to the internet-connected hub over several kilometers of range. We also applied careful waterproofing strategies required to make the product capable of withstanding months and years of use buried in the earth. In the end, we delivered a robust design, complete with assembly guides, ready for a pilot manufacturing run.