mySense: A comprehensive data management environment to improve precision agriculture practices

Over the last few years, an extensive set of technologies have been systematically included in precision agriculture (PA) and also in precision viticulture (PV) practices, as tools that allow efficient monitoring of nearly any parameter to achieve sustainable crop management practices and to increase both crop yield and quality. However, many technologies and standards are not yet included on those practices. Therefore, potential benefits that may result from putting together agronomic knowledge with electronics and computer technologies are still not fully accomplished. Both emergent and established paradigms, such as the Internet of Everything (IoE), Internet of Things (IoT), cloud and fog computing, together with increasingly cheaper computing technologies - with very low power requirements and a diversity of wireless technologies, available to exchange data with increased efficiency - and intelligent systems, have evolved to a level where it is virtually possible to expeditiously create and deploy any required monitoring solution. Pushed by all of these technological trends and recent developments, data integration has emerged as the layer between crops and knowledge needed to efficiently manage it. In this paper, the mySense environment is presented, aimed to systematize data acquisition procedures to address common PA/PV issues. mySense builds over a 4-layer technological structure: sensor and sensor nodes, crop field and sensor networks, cloud services and support to front-end applications. It makes available a set of free tools based on the Do-It-Yourself (DIY) concept and enables the use of Arduino (R) and Raspberry Pi (RN) low-cost platforms to quickly prototype a complete monitoring application. Field experiments provide compelling evidences that mySense environment represents an important step forward towards Smart Farming, by enabling the use of low-cost, fast deployment, integrated and transparent technologies to increase PA/PV monitoring applications adoption.