Sol Chip Introduces: Wireless Autonomous Solar Unit for Improved Precision Agriculture and Smart Irrigation

The new development enables the optimization of water consumption and the improvement of agricultural crops on the basis of data collected from the field

Sol Chip Comm, a provider of Internet of Things (IoT) and solar energy harvesting systems and solutions, today announced the entry into the market of its new technological development: Sol Chip Comm – an autonomous and wireless solar tag for precision agriculture and smart irrigation applications.

Sol Chip Comm, or SCC, from Sol Chip is an ultra-compact wireless tag that is powered by solar energy and does not need any maintenance. The SCC provides power to a variety of sensors, activates them and connects them to the cloud wirelessly.

In precision agriculture and smart irrigation applications, SCC feeds real-time data to precision cloud agriculture. The data is generated by hundreds of agricultural sensors deployed in the field, including soil moisture sensors, soil temperature, ambient temperature, air temperature, fertilizer levels and more. These vital data are collected by SCC units, uploaded to the cloud wirelessly and processed by unique precision agriculture applications, for data-driven decisions regarding irrigation and fertilization optimization, and improved crop quality.
Sol Chip and its new SCC device break through barriers on the way to adopting precise farming technologies and smart irrigation. SCC, based on Sol Chip’s innovative energy harvesting technology, operates on solar energy and is designed to operate continuously for more than ten years without any maintenance requirements, eliminating the need to replace batteries frequently and the environmental consequences of using batteries. As a wireless device, the SCC eliminates the costs and effort involved in deploying and maintaining wires to the field-installed sensors. The compact dimensions of the SCC make the product easy to install and re-install in all relevant farming environments, it does not interfere with field workers or farm equipment, and is not conspicuous to thieves. In addition, the low cost of SCC makes the deployment of wireless sensors for agricultural purposes also economically accessible.
“Precise agriculture is undoubtedly the future of agriculture,” said Avi Schweizer, CTO of Netafim, the world’s leading company for smart drips and micro-irrigation solutions. “And Sol Chip takes the right approach that will make the promises of precision agriculture and smart irrigation a reality.”
“With our LightBattery technology, Sol Chip is uniquely positioned to realize our vision of enabling billions of autonomous smart devices in the Internet of Things (IoT) to be cost-effective and sustainable,” explained Dr. Shani Caesar. Founder and CEO of Sol Chip. “Our new SCC device clearly demonstrates these features, required for precision farming and smart irrigation, and we are currently working on new applications for additional markets.”
In addition to precision agriculture and smart irrigation, the Sol Chip SCC device can also be applied in smart cities, smart electricity networks, equipment monitoring and similar applications.
Sol Chip now offers a kit for experimenting with precision farming and smart irrigation, which includes two SCC tags, two sensors, a wireless hub, all the necessary accessories, access to a third-party web server and support. All components of the kit are pre-connected, and the kit is ready for deployment and immediate testing in an open field or greenhouse.