Microsoft FarmBeats

Target SDGs

Target Users (Target Impact Group)

Household

Distributors / Implementing Organizations

Microsoft, DJI and Slantrange

Competitive Landscape

Direct competitors include RML Farmer - Krishi Mitr.

Regions

Worldwide

Manufacturing/Building Method

The solution uses components already available in the market: sensors, drones, cloud systems

Intellectural Property Type

Copyright

User Provision Model

Unknown

Distributions to Date Status

Pilot projects in the US and India.

Potential pilot projects in DRC, China and New Zealand.

Design Specifications

The solution includes soil sensors, video streaming balloons, drones, local farm computers and the Microsoft Azure network.

Product Schematics

Technical Support

Unknown

Replacement Components

N/A

Lifecycle

N/A

Manufacturer Specified Performance Parameters

“Availability: The platform should have negligible downtime.

• Capacity: It should support sensors with widely varying requirements: pH sensors reporting few bytes of data to drones sending gigabytes of video.
• Cloud Connectivity: Several farming applications, such as crop cycle prediction, seeding suggestions, farming practice advisory, etc. rely on long term data analytics.
• Data Freshness: Stale sensor data from the farm can make applications suggest incorrect courses of action to the farmer.” (Vanish, D. et al)

Vetted Performance Status

FarmBeats supports high bandwidth sensors using TVWS, a long range technology. It uses a weather-aware solar-powered IoT base station, and an intelligent Gateway that ensure that services are available in the Cloud and offline. It also incorporates path-planning algorithms that extend drone battery life. (Vanish, D. et al)

Safety

N/A

Complementary Technical Systems

N/A

Academic Research and References

Compliance with regulations

The solution uses unlicensed, long-range TV white space radio spectrum using FCC certified Adaptrum ACRS radios

Evaluation methods

Academic research done in two farms of the US

Other Information

Chandra, R. “FarmBeats: AI & IoT for Agriculture: enabling affordable data-driven farming”