V.DIG.2022 - Romani Pastoral Company – MLA-MAC Systems Digital Livestock 4.0 2019/2020

Summary

MAC Systems was contracted to supply a range of solutions for the RPC – MLA Digital Livestock 4 project that was installed at the Redbank property. The project requirements involved five main components. They were:

• supply of Lora radios to connect to the LoraWAN network
• supply of suitable sensors for the range of solutions that were requested
• installation of equipment to optimise performance and protect the equipment
• data presentation into a web-based viewing platform
• supply a pump monitoring and control solution independently of the LoraWAN network (due to the limitations of Lora)

The reason for the project is to evaluate under practical conditions a range of solutions from some of the key suppliers within the industry. The aim/objective is to evaluate the performance, robustness, reliability, support and data presentation from these suppliers in order for the MLA to be able to present the results and findings to industry members and producers. With the ever-increasing range of products and solutions appearing within the market, there was a need to undertake a project that would identify the range of solutions applicable to the industry, test and evaluate them under practical conditions, identify any shortcomings and provide the objective and real life findings to the industry at the completion of the project.

Objectives

The objective was to demonstrate the capacity of digital technology on a working farm and show how the property owner can benefit from accessing and analysing data collected remotely.
Specifically, supply, install and make operational the following digital components:

1. 10x water trough sensors
2. 3x water tank sensors
3. 1x diesel fuel tank sensor
4. 10x gate and door sensors
5. 1x pump automation
6. 1x water flow monitor
7. 3x soil probes

Will have trained and acquired sign-off from Romani Pastoral Company’s General Manager and MLA’s innovation and Events Coordinator.

Key findings

Devices have been grouped by brand showing that Ellenex units (trough, water tanks and diesel tank) have been the most problematic, however performance improved significantly after antennas were replaced and new firmware was loaded onto each device. Entelechy devices (soil moisture probes) have performed very well with uptimes of close to 100%.

Most Digital Matter devices (flow meter, gates and doors) are working at above 93% uptime however the Front Gate systems are struggling to get good reception with the individual average uptime on the Left gate at ~80% and Right gate at ~90%. These units, particularly the Left Gate may need a higher gain external antenna to improve reception to the gateway to achieve uptime rates consistently above 90%.

The main insight from this project so far for MAC Systems does not relate to the data collection, but with the installation. We had underestimated the damage caused by cockatoos, particularly to the antennas on the stock trough monitoring sites. Once we noticed initial damage, we designed and installed bird protection around the radios to stop birds from perching on the radios and to protect the antennas and the cable exiting the radios.

Benefits to industry

The MLA Digital Livestock 4.0 project provides “in field” practical feedback and objective data and evidence on what systems and solutions are available, which systems and service providers are supplying fit for purpose solutions, robust and reliable equipment, user friendly and practical web interfaces for monitoring, notification alerts and data analysis and confidence in what works and what doesn’t.

The information collected can be available to the meat and livestock industry and farmers that are wanting to invest in this technology, with the confidence in making the correct decision based on the practical in field experience, use and knowledge gained during this project, rather than “sales hype”. An important component for the success of the project will be receiving the feedback from RPC management and staff that have used the technology over the duration of the project.

MLA action

The learnings from the Romani Digital demonstration farm project has helped shape the MLA Digital Agriculture business plan. A need has been identified to further test Ag-tech which is market ready with producers in real world situations to identify the use cases and value propositions of the solutions beyond the simple demonstration of them. This is guiding the current and future MLA investments in this space.

Future research

Future research and development should be focused on expanding the wireless sensor ecosystem. In particular, water quality and animal tracking. Additional research in data analytics of the collected data, to explore water consumption and animal health, is also of significant interest.