On the Experiences with Testbeds and Applications in Precision Farming

Abstract

While success stories are likely to be reported, failures are rarely published -- even if a lot can be learned from them. In this paper we present experiences and findings from our testbed and WSN deployments. Our PotatoNet has been deployed on an agricultural area in 2015 to perform several WSN outdoor experiments while measuring the stress of potato crops. It was extended a year later by the PotatoMesh, a solar panel-based mesh network of nodes. Throughout both of these deployments we experienced problems and failures at different stages of the projects. We derive key problems and some important concepts when it comes to outdoor WSN deployments.