PROGRESS on the Digital Homestead project will be unveiled for members of the Northern beef industry during an open day at Spyglass Beef Research Station next month.
The ‘Rural Technology Demonstration Day’ being held at Spyglass located near Charters Towers will give producers a first-hand look at how the technology created during the project works in practice.
Suppliers and supporters will also be on the grounds to relate their experiences using the digital tools that feed into the data dashboard (dubbed the ‘digital dashboard’).
The project commenced in early 2012, and is a collaborative effort involving a research team from Queensland DAF, James Cook University, CSIRO and Queensland University of Technology.
The project was created to evaluate how modern Information and Communication Technologies (ICT) such as wireless sensor networks (WSN’s), data analytics and rural connectivity could support greater profitability for the Northern beef industry.
Existing digital products and new research equipment was brought together via a new browser-based data dashboard that can be used as a farm management system.
Project manager Margie Atkinson said with the project wrapping up by the end of 2015 it was time to showcase what the system currently offers and how it will be of use to the industry in future.
“It isn’t one of those research projects that is announced, completed and then never heard about again.” Ms Atkinson said.
We have proof of concept at a large property scale and there is considerable interest from commercial providers to take the system to the next stage,” she said.
“The open day will give producers an opportunity to see what the future looks like for extensive grazing properties, have a play with the system, talk to people with first-hand experience, and make an assessment of how it will be of value to them individually.
“While commercial standalone products are already available on the market, the dashboard’s value lies in it bringing all these different information products together in one place.”
Using the dashboard, farm managers can see real-time statistics of their property and livestock ‘at a glance’, they can know where cattle are, explore trends in cattle weight, see how much water is in tanks and browse climate variables from on farm sensors.
It is a truly flexible system that has been created to allow for the addition of new data streams as they are developed and become commercially available. Setup is simple and follows a ‘drag and drop’ approach whereby users can select and display the data feeds they want.
During the day local high school students will be creating some simple sensor networks from scratch and making them ‘talk’ to the ‘Digital Dashboard’ to provide real time farm data information.
“We’ll also be demonstrating how to link walk over weigh systems, tanks sensors, cameras, and weather stations to the Digital Dashboard.”
For your chance to see what the future of farm management may look like head to the open day being held from 9.30am to 4pm on Friday, October 9.
To RSVP email info@digitalhomestead.org or to access the full program (available soon) visit the website www.digitalhomestead.org
