Sustainable development and agriculture go hand-in-hand. Greener practices that support the environment and increase profit margins now rely on the Internet of Things to allow farmers to maximize yield and reduce the use of natural resources.
Smart irrigation is a good example – by combining soil sensors and cloud-based data analytics to monitor soil moisture, farm operators can more easily and efficiently determine when they should irrigate their crops. Connected irrigation systems take it one step further by automating the watering process, conserving valuable resources and preventing overwatering, which can be detrimental to yield.
These smart agricultural concepts are now being applied to personal and professional segments. The new interest in corporate sustainability has given rise to solutions that are designed to not only beautify the interior and exterior of office spaces but also improve air quality and productivity. IoT technology allows companies to increase the impact of their sustainable efforts without negatively affecting their human or technology resources.
Sagegreenlife is an innovative company that creates walls of living plants that serve as permanent nature fixtures in offices, schools, hospitals, hotels, restaurants, and other spaces. These walls help to create a more relaxed, more invigorated space that helps reduce stress, enhance cognitive skills, and boost daily performance.
Challenges
The living walls Sagegreenlife creates vary in size, from a few feet wide to covering an entire exterior of a large building. This means each wall has different needs – amount and frequency of irrigation, light, and fertilization. To ensure the greenery lives and flourishes in their unique environments, Sagegreenlife implemented automatic irrigation systems for the walls. However, in the early stages of implementation, the company was unable to quickly detect and respond to issues – including over-watering, under-watering, or empty water reservoirs – until it was too late. As a result, damaged plants needed to be replaced, causing inconvenience to the company and its customers and impacting overall confidence in the product.
To make matters more complex, Sagegreenlife’s connectivity solution could not be supported by WiFi. Some clients were uncomfortable allowing outside organizations onto their networks – meaning a living wall that relied on WiFi wasn’t an option for their company. In situations where access could be granted, other potential challenges presented themselves. During installation, setting up the wall on a clients’ network took additional time and man-power, impacting the ease of setup. After installation, monitoring and automation disruptions would occur when IT departments changed the network password or experienced outages.
To solve these various issues, the company decided to seek out a solution provider that could:
- Provide connectivity, carrier management, and hardware for an IoT-based solution
- Offer the visibility needed to proactively react to irrigation issues
- Simplify installation improve speed-to market with out-of-the-box connectivity
Solution
After evaluating their options, Sagegreenlife knew that they would be able to solve the majority of their challenges by leveraging cellular technology as its primary connection – not WiFi. And, because the remote irrigation solution would be in locations across the United States and Canada, Sagegreenlife needed a partner with deep relationships with multiple carriers who could offer the coverage they needed and manage each of these relationships.
Partnering with KORE allowed them to address all of their challenges. The initial solution included cost-effective cellular as primary connection in each of their key markets, both existing and planned, because of the strong carrier relationships that KORE has established. KORE further provided hardware procurement and custom configurations for the unique needs of each living wall. When issues with connectivity arise, routers provide backup WiFi connectivity to allow communication until the problem is resolved.
“After we discussed it from a technical standpoint, how it all came together, my representative at Cradlepoint suggested KORE as one potential partner that could do all of the things we talked about – give me coverage across North America over a variety of carriers. That they were a very cost-effective, strong partner of theirs in terms of configuring, provisioning, and deploying the Cradlepoint product we were using. And, from the time I was introduced, follow up was fast. They got a team on board to help understand and design a solution for me. There was no need to look anywhere else.”
Results
The result of partnering with KORE, an experienced IoT enabler and solution provider, was multifaceted – ranging from significant decreases in installation time to overall resource efficiency.
Ease-of-Use and Security
Leveraging cellular as the primary connection, each living wall arrives at its destination fully configured. On-site installation is streamlined, requiring no assistance from IT professionals or Sagegreenlife representatives – installers simply plug the sensors into the routers, drastically reducing the amount of time and knowledge necessary for implementation. Because they only rely on WiFi for a backup connection, the company’s encrypted network is left unexposed and the security risks minimal.
Resource Efficiency and Cost Savings
The self-irrigating technology is not only reliable, but it is eco-friendly, distributing the perfect amount of water evenly throughout each wall while delivering 10 times the water efficiency. The company uses 75 percent less water than any other living wall system available today, and has a 95 percent plant survivability rate, greatly eliminating replacement needs and the company’s overall cost. And the company is able to monitor all of its living wall systems 24/7, ensuring its ability to detect and resolve issues before they become problematic for customers and expensive for Sagegreenlife. In fact, according to the company, Sagegreenlife’s partnership with KORE has significant financial benefits as well – increased efficiency, reliability, and speed-to-market are protecting its profit margin, reducing maintenance costs, and improving customer satisfaction.
Generational Impacts
In 2019, Sagegreenlife joined forces with KORE to donate a living wall to the NEW Academy of Science and Arts Learning Center, a unique Los Angeles elementary school focused on academic and artistic achievement in the arts and sciences. The wall not only provides aesthetic and wellness benefits but also serves as a valuable teaching tool that NEW students can learn from for many years as an active component of their STEM and technology curriculum.
Future Plans
Moving forward, the company plans on implementing new designs and offerings that Sagegreenlife expects to lead to a greater volume of business – opportunities that the partnership with KORE has helped facilitate. But even more exciting than that is the overall impact that IoT solutions like these living walls help facilitate. Leveraging IoT for greener living, sustainability, and productivity will have a lasting effect on the world in which we live. By partnering with KORE, Sagegreenlife has the ability to scale and grow their footprint in the sustainable technology space.
About Sagegreenlife
Sagegreenlife is dedicated to building a better quality of life through living design. The company designs, manufactures and installs living green walls that can be scaled for any size project and interior design products that reimagine the way people interact with nature. Through advanced patented hydroponic technology, Sagegreenlife is committed to designing healthy, sustainable and aesthetically captivating spaces. With an array of design capabilities, Sagegreenlife is at the forefront of the green design industry.
