P.PSH.1112 - Evaluation of connectivity and Internet of Things solutions for Murchison House Station

Summary

The purpose of this research, includes providing the best possible Internet Access Solution in the area. Test feasibility with regards to bringing NBN services from nearby Kalbarri to Murchison House Station. Secondly, to test if low-power Industrial Internet-of-Things Technology (IIoT) could be used to for weather monitoring, make water management and mustering more efficient and sustainable.

Remote water management covering both monitoring and control in a particularly challenging landscape over approximately 123,000 Ha. The target demography is extensive livestock producers, relevance across all MLA sectors. The project will demonstrate the feasibility and savings by use of IIoT in extensive livestock production.

Objectives

• Provide optimised Internet Access services by using Wifi Technology to extend NBN services from Kalbarri to Murchison House Station.
• Demonstrate and test using IIoT across Murchison House Station to provide weather data, remote monitoring and control of water systems and mustering system.
• Field day to demonstrate benefits and efficiency provided by use on technology in extensive livestock operations.
• Document efficiencies and benefits with regards to use of technology in extensive livestock production.

Key findings

The IIoT network and devices worked successfully across all selected locations at Murchison House Station. The Meshing network provided a much better coverage than anticipated and the use of expensive Wifi technology is not required for anything else than high-speed Internet Services. It demonstrated that this network technology can be used at a large scale without large infrastructure investments.

Considerable savings has been achieved with regards to water management, based on the numbers provided by Murchison House Station, the annual cost was reduced from $77,600 to 39,500, which is an approximate 50% reduction in costs. Based on these results Murchison House Station continues to invest in technology to increase efficiency and sustainability, including to contribute to carbon farming.

Benefits to industry

The project provides findings that support that usage of technology in extensive livestock operations will provide benefits with regards to operational cost-efficiencies, animal welfare and ability to adjust farming system both tactically (in-season) and planning based on data from weather stations as well as water management based on remote monitoring and control.

MLA action

The learnings from the Murchison House Station project has helped shape the MLA Digital Agriculture business plan. A need has been identified to further test AgTech 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. The results were also used in MLA Project P.PSH.1179 Making Real Farms Smart – Mixed Sheep Ag Tech.

Future research

The meshing IoT network provide technology that require less infrastructure investments. It is recommended to research and develop systems based on this platform that demonstrate that IIoT can be used at scale for instance for use in animal tag systems, vehicle and asset management and tracking as well as staff text communication.