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“I’d like to start using the INCYT platform, but what about my existing probes?” It’s a question we hear all too often, and one that is probably as old as the agtech industry itself. Farmers have almost become accustomed to buying agtech products and then having to buy the same or similar products again a couple of years later when they decide to switch providers.
Soil moisture probes are a classic example: the majority of this market is serviced by three manufacturers: AquaCheck, Sentek and EnviroPro. Whether a farmer decides to partner with an ag retailer, agtech provider or one of the manufacturers of soil moisture probes directly, chances are they’ll end up with a soil moisture probe of one of these three brands in their field. And why would you want to pay to buy the same product again, just because you’ve got a new preferred organisation with a better platform to visualise your data from the exact same sensor on?
It is with this problem in mind that INCYT’s engineering team set out to create a solution to give Australian farmers the option of keeping their existing soil moisture probes, but still be able to reap the benefits of INCYT’s centralised dashboard: a retrofit kit. This retrofit kit was released to our clients last month and can be used on any Aquacheck, Sentek or Enviropro soil moisture probe that has an SDI-12 interface - which are the majority of newer styles of soil moisture probes made by these manufacturers.
The retrofit kit provides you with a wiring loom that you connect to the cable of your soil moisture probe, and a blue node that connects to this wiring loom. The blue node powers the soil moisture probe and sends its data to your dashboard via your INCYT base station. With INCYT you can choose to install and pull your soil moisture probes yourselves, or you can have your local agronomist do this for you. The INCYT system is a very simple plug & play system, which means that you don’t need any technical expertise to install or pull your probes!
If you have existing soil moisture probes and are keen to learn more about the benefits of visualising your probe data on INCYT, we’d love to give you a demo of this and the many other types of sensor data you can visualise on the same centralised platform. If you’re not sure whether your soil moisture probes have an SDI-12 interface and are therefore able to be retrofitted with the INCYT wiring loom, just reach out to the team and we can help you find out.
