Australia’s Smart Paddock, which provides smart ear tags to monitor the health of livestock, will implemented LoRa devices and will adopt the LoRaWAN standard into its Bluebell smart global positioning system.
"To develop Smart Paddock’s GPS livestock ear tag, we researched and evaluated all the wireless communications protocols available on the market,” said Darren Wolchyn, CEO and founder of Smart Paddock. “To meet our customer needs of a low cost ear tag that could be deployed in the thousands over large farm properties, LoRaWAN came out on top of all other technologies for its long distance capabilities."
Smart Paddock has been deploying GPS tracking for cattle since 2017 with the use of Bluebell smart ear tags designed to survive the harshest environmental and operational conditions. Livestock farmers can track their livestock in real-time through their mobile phone or computer, get text alerts for stray/stolen or downed animals, review pasture usage maps, monitor the activity level of key animals and see how far the animals are walking each day to access food or water.
Bluebell is being positioned as an ideal network solution as the tag can support and encourage farmers to add other operational Internet of Things (IoT) sensors to their farms to monitor water level, set up electric fences that utilise an existing LoRaWAN network, among others.
To integrate LoRaWAN into their solution, the company has recently collaborated with Semtech Corporation.
“Smart Paddock’s utilisation of LoRaWAN is a proven example of where IoT technology is actively shaping the future of farming to be smarter and more efficient,” said Marc Pégulu, vice president of IoT product marketing and strategy for Semtech’s Wireless and Sensing Products Group. “The unparalleled benefits of LoRa devices that both minimise expenses and reduce environmental impact of any IoT solution is promising for the field of smart agriculture.”
Touted to be the smallest and lightest in the industry, Smart Paddock has deployed over 1,200 tracking devices over the last three years across farm properties in Australia and New Zealand and more than 10,000 deployments are planned in the next year.
