In-field soil monitoring
Our probes sit in the root zone and report on their own. You see how wet each block really is, whether the ground is warm enough to plant, and whether nutrients and acidity are where the crop needs them.
A soil test once a year tells you what the ground was like on the day the sample was taken. It says nothing about the week the crop was thirsty, the month fertiliser was washed past the roots, or the slow creep of salt in a block that is irrigated with borehole water.
Root-zone conditions change by the hour. The farms that out-yield their neighbours are the ones that see those changes while there is still time to act on them.
How it works
One moisture probe per zone at root depth as the baseline, with nutrient, pH and salinity probes where the soil map says variation matters most.
Moisture probes are calibrated against your soil’s dry and wet points, and the calibration can be nudged from the dashboard without a site visit.
Probes wake, read, report and sleep — every 30 minutes between 06:00 and 18:00 and every two hours overnight — so a small solar panel keeps them running indefinitely.
Each probe carries its own dry and wet thresholds. When a block moves out of band you get an alert while it is still one corner of one field.
What you get
A dry block, a salt build-up, a pH drift — each shows up as a trend on the dashboard weeks before it shows on the leaf.
Compare this season against last on the same block rather than trying to remember it. Every reading is dated and kept.
Press “Request reading” on the dashboard and the probe answers on its next check-in, within about two minutes.
If a probe has not reported, the dashboard says so. It will never show you a comfortable number that is not real.
Nutrient probes talk to the node over an industrial RS-485 bus. If a read fails — a loose connector, a flooded junction — our firmware skips that report rather than sending 0-0-0. A zero would look like real “no nutrients” data and would sit in your history for ever.
The same rule applies to time. A node that cannot confirm the correct time does not report at all, so no reading is ever stamped with a wrong date and sorted into the wrong season.
Equipment
How wet each block really is, at root depth.
Nitrogen, phosphorus and potassium levels in the ground.
Whether your soil is too acidic or too alkaline for the crop.
Salt and fertiliser build-up that quietly limits growth.
Whether the ground is warm enough to plant.
Questions
Every 30 minutes from 06:00 to 18:00 and every two hours overnight by default. The interval is set from the platform, so it can be tightened during a critical growth stage without touching the device.
No. Field probes run on a small solar panel and a battery pack and sleep between readings. No trenching and no cables across the farm.
One moisture probe per irrigation zone is the practical minimum. Nutrient, pH and salinity probes go where a soil map shows the variation is — often far fewer than people expect.
Yes. Moisture probes are calibrated to your soil at installation, and re-calibration can be triggered from the dashboard.
The first conversation is a site visit: we walk the farm with you and understand what you grow or keep and what is going wrong. No cost, no commitment. Buy outright, lease, or pay as you go by M-Pesa.