SPECIALISED HARDWARE SUPPLIED Dacom develops and supplies specialised hardware, software and online advisory services to arable farms and global agribusiness
Farmers can share crop information and continuously monitor and fine- tune their production process throughout the growing season using the information provided by connected devices, such as smartphones and tablets, says arable agriculture yield management systems provider Dacom.
To support farmers in this endeavour, the company launched a new telematics standard last year to support agricultural applications on smart devices, comprising an installed base of 10 000 sensors in weather stations, as well as field and soil monitoring, and irrigation management sites.
Dacom develops and supplies specialised hardware, software and online advisory services to arable farms and global agri- business.
The company says it hopes to use this new technology to enhance sustainable production in a way that increases farmers’ profits.
“As such, we are able to help farmers, and agribusiness in general to anticipate needs and allocate resources and materials on a continuous basis through their smart- phones. “It’s about enabling them to be more efficient [and] less wasteful and [to] maximise yield,” says Dacom CEO Janneke Hadders.
Following the launch of Dacom’s management system, international communication solutions integrator Orange Business Services (Orange) assisted Dacom in installing the Orange Machine-to-Machine (M2M) solution in 30 countries. This involved the provision of tens of thousands of Sim M2M connections and the establishment of a flexible, scalable M2M communications infrastructure.
Orange’s solution has enhanced crop-production management in these countries, which aids sustainability and increases profits. The solution has also enabled Dacom to rely on seamless data transfer between smartphones and tablets. Activation and tracking, as well as Sim card ordering, have also been simplified through a dedicated management portal. The M2M communications infrastructure provided by Orange is key to Dacom’s go-to-market strategy, as customers are requiring global support and connectivity.
Dacom says its approach is to focus on simplicity to make every connected Dacom device easy to install for each individual farmer.
Further, the company’s engagement with Orange means that the solution does not roam but receives the local signal. Further, there is only one Orange M2M Sim card inside each Dacom box (management system), with a standard price being charged for the Sim cards, regardless of their location.
This makes a difference in terms of ease of installation and getting the device online through seamless data transfer to device-agnostic smartphones and tablets with managed activation on behalf of users. It also results in significant cost benefits, as farmers can install the solution themselves.
Meanwhile, through its scalable communications infrastructure, Orange will collect and transmit information from Dacom’s connected devices, including the weather stations and soil moisture sensors, by combining sensor technology.
The Orange M2M solution has enabled Dacom to move closer to its vision of using technology to enhance arable crop production worldwide.