A company in Cambridge, England, has a vision to harness the Internet of Things (IoT) to monitor the environmental conditions of grain silos more efficiently. If successful, farmers may spend less energy maintaining their grain supplies while also reducing food waste.
The product design? A fistful of beans.
All fairy tale references aside, the patent BeanIoT from RFMOD is currently undergoing a series of trials to see if it is a viable alternative to current sensory systems that monitor the environmental conditions of grain storage silos. The designer of BeanIoT states that the current state-of-the-art technologies for this type of application are either sensors attached to dangling wires or wireless systems that are too expensive for the regular farmer.
This is just one application for the BeanIoT product. The promotional video below shows how Andrew Holland, CEO of BeanIoT, has a lot in store for the little gadget.How the Magic Beans Work
Each bean is a thumb-sized capsule 45 mm long and 18 mm wide that contains a circuit board with an array of Bluetooth radio and sensors that measure various environmental factors. This data includes temperature, moisture and air pressure, all of which will help the farmer keep track of the condition of the grains.
The sensors also monitor motion, which enables users to find the approximate location of the bean, and several gases, including carbon dioxide and carbon monoxide, of which a high concentration may indicate the presence of insects. Alongside the sensors are an electronic compass and a gyroscope for analyzing the bean’s orientation.
All of these are powered by a wireless rechargeable battery that can last 14 months and takes a few hours to recharge. This is accomplished by letting the beans go into “sleep” mode for most of the time, and they wake intermittently to take parameter readings.
The product designers aim to sell the bean for USD$30 a piece—fairly inexpensive, but it should also be noted that for the application they were intended, a farmer needs to buy several.
Once the beans are deployed in a heap of grains in the silo, they act as nodes in a 3D network of environmental data—giving a much clearer picture of what’s going on compared with using just one or two beans.
As for the IoT software, the magic beans are designed to function with smart systems that either send data locally or through gateways to the cloud. It also offers a multiplatform consumer app and APIs to connect to 3rd party technology.
Farmers don’t have to be IoT experts to be able to use the monitoring software, and there are multiple options for the user interface. For example, the data can show up on a tablet as a layered map instead of a list of numbers.
An improved method of monitoring the conditions of grains may not only prevent food waste, but also save dollars for the farmer who may be unnecessarily drying and mixing the grains within their storage facility.
Other Applications for the Magic Beans
The product design may be used for other agriculture applications, including monitoring within livestock barns, chemical sheds or honeybee hives. As entrepreneurs typically do, Holland has considered almost every possible sector where the beans can be used:
o Smart buildings
- Air quality, HVAC, gestured lighting control
o Track and seek
- Locate items such as keys, glasses, purses, phones and smart watches
- Parcel transit data-logger
o Sports and wellbeing
- Gauge performance and team interplay
- Assisted living, including fall detection and proximity
o Agritech
- Bulk storage and conditioning (for example, grain and potatoes)
- Valued-asset tracking
o Entertainment
- Crowd/entertainment
- Gesture/game controller/air-mouse
o Retail/advertising
- Beacon/in-store promotion
- Product information at point of sale
A general overview of these applications is shown on the BeanIoT product page. To name an application example in more specific terms, an elderly person can keep the device in their pocket on a regular basis, providing an immediate alert system should they have a fall in their home—just another case where IoT has the enormous potential to improve livelihoods.
Questions for the Final Design
A very farmer-like question remains: Once these beans are deployed in the grain stack, how do we get them out? It seems the answer for this is not fully developed yet—but with the ability to track each bean’s rough location, it is very possible to enable a type of automatic system for extracting them from the grain heap.
One more question to consider: Can these magic beans be used to prevent grain dust explosions? This phenomenon is known to happen when oxygen, heat and dry grain dust are combined with an ignition source, frequently from the operation of equipment.Perhaps it is a bit of an ambitious goal, but one with a lot of potential for improving safety in the work place. Grain dust explosions killed 19 people in 2015 alone.
For more information about the international patent by BeanIoT, visit its product website.