Addressing Sensor Affordability
Tim Hammerich
News Reporter
The makers of Soiltech Wireless are helping farmers be in the know about what is happening in their fields without physically being there. Founder and CEO Ehsan Soltan believes their soil sensor and app are different from competitors because they’re focused on variability and price.
Soltan… “When customers log onto the app, they can see within each field that they have the variation of soil types, textures, etc. And then we’ve calibrated the device to major soil types as well. So if you bury it into a predominately sandy loam, the device will automatically start reading specifically for a sandy loam. Now of course, all our customers can fine-tune and switch calibrations but that goes some way to helping to account for variability. And the other way is to price the device, I guess, affordability so you can put multiple devices in a field. Because whether you’re growing potatoes, corn, any crop, you’re dealing on a typically big scale and fields can vary drastically, you know, within one field. And existing solutions were very expensive so it was almost impractical to put more than one sensor in a field because you were really never going to get your money back. So, building the device to be as affordable as possible was paramount to helping to account to some of that variability.”
The device is suited for tubers, broad acre-row crops, and they’ve started to experiment with strawberries, lettuce, almonds, and grapes.
