Germany: New system by RAM wirelessly monitors greenhouse climate

RAM GmbH has developed a system to wirelessly monitor and report on climate conditions inside a greenhouse. “The system measures temperature and humidity levels inside the greenhouse,” said RAM's Dominik Bretz. “It's useful because if you see a spike in humidity, for example, it could be that a water leak is causing that spike, so you can use the information to go into the greenhouse and find the cause of that high humidity reading.” The setup consists of a standalone software suite, a receiver and between five and 25 sensors that are placed inside the greenhouse. Information is continually gathered by the sensors and fed wirelessly through the receiver to a laptop where the software records the information and presents it in a variety of charts and graphs. While the product package can come with as few as five sensors, Bretz said that the more sensors used, the better the system works.

“We get exact data from the points where the sensors are placed,” explained Bretz. “The rest of the field is calculated by our software based on what's been measured; so the more sensors used, the more accurate the calculations will be.” In addition to the sensors, receiver and software, RAM's system comes with a laptop pre-installed with the programs necessary to run the system. RAM's software can also be installed on a client's laptop, but it would need to be sent into RAM's factory to have the necessary software installed. Bretz said their system, which won an award from INDEGA last year, is ideal for research institutions as well as commercial growers.

“It's interesting for researchers because they need to maintain uniform conditions for all their tests, and they can be sure to keep that uniform climate by monitoring greenhouse conditions,” said Bretz. “But it can also be used by tomato or cucumber growers, for example, to detect things that might be signs of diseases – it's really good for all greenhouse growers.”

For more information:
RAM GmbH Mess- und Regeltechnik
Dominik Bretz
[email protected]
www.ram-gtb.de