AWS for CropX23 Oct 2020 08:31
Using AWS to Support a Big Data, In-Soil Sensor Application
To solve the problem, the company chose to run its in-soil sensor data solution on Amazon Web Services (AWS). “AWS provides easy-to-deploy and scalable technology, managed with a simple console,” says Sagi Briteman, vice president of research and development for CropX. “It is also easy to establish the architecture. We started with building blocks, with uncertainty about our physical deployment and how much we needed. Using AWS, it was easy to create instances as we grew.”
The CropX big data solution captures data from thousands of global soil sensors and sends it to a centralized platform running on hundreds of Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud (Amazon EC2) instances. The solution analyzes and saves satellite imagery data to Amazon Simple Storage Service (Amazon S3) buckets and uses Amazon Relational Database Service (Amazon RDS) as its primary database and the core for storing all agronomical data and insights. Additionally, CropX relies on Elastic Load Balancing to support growing traffic from web and mobile devices, and it uses Amazon Simple Queue Service (Amazon SQS) to transfer messages between different services.
The CropX platform combines above-ground datasets with in-soil data measured by sensors that transmit that data to the AWS-based solution. The data is integrated with imaging, weather, topography, and soil data, as well as crop models, hydraulic models, and user inputs. It is then analyzed by AI-based algorithms to provide analytical insights via the CropX web or mobile app. Farmers, breeding companies, agrochemical companies, crop insurers, and irrigation system manufacturers use the app to receive irrigation and crop nutrition recommendations for their crops. “Our customers can use the app to view the updated status of soil readings, moisture levels, and root zones,” says Briteman. “We also provide alerts and notifications if their fields are too dry or too wet.”