THE CHALLENGE
By combining cutting-edge optical remote sensing technology, machine vision and analytics, Gardin’s technology allows producers to measure plant physiology and proactively adjust parameters for optimised operations. Gardin calls this Real-Time Response Agriculture, continually changing the environment to meet the needs of the plants.
Gardin wanted to speed up their device onboarding; the process of configuring individual sensors and integrating them with the cloud platform. Sensor units were previously installed during manufacture and activated by the customer on the first power-up. Gardin sought a smarter solution that could automatically validate serial numbers before issuing device certificates.
Gardin planned to incorporate device provisioning in the manufacturing process; as such, any solution implemented needed to be robust, secure and scalable to enable the seamless provisioning of embedded sensors in large volumes.
KEY DRIVERS
- A frictionless mechanism to provision sensor units.
- The device must be activated by the customer on power up.
- Serial numbers must be validated before device activation.
“With time and development resources always being at a premium, choosing to partner with Green Custard and their team of AWS and IoT experts made both technical and financial sense, and through their support, we're delivering to our customers a secure yet seamless "plug in and go" solution for installing and connecting their fleet of Gardin sensors to our platform.”
Connor Goddard
Tech Lead, Gardin
THE SOLUTION
Green Custard designed and developed a bespoke solution to satisfy all outlined requirements, utilising a range of AWS services such as Amazon DynamoDB, AWS IoT Core, AWS Lambda and AWS Greengrass to integrate with the already established AWS environment.
The solution used AWS Lambda to retrieve key requests, validate serial numbers, create keys and return the generated certificates to the device. Green Custard incorporated robust testing and security as standard, with key triggers to alert Gardin of significant events.
THE RESULTS
The Gardin Platform is completely automated. The sensors are plug and play and, once deployed, run fully autonomously. The Platform has a comprehensive API to allow simple integration with whatever farm management system software a grower uses.
By collaborating with Green Custard, an AWS service partner with in-depth knowledge of IoT, Gardin has implemented a robust, secure solution that has been rigorously tested in line with specified requirements and industry best practices.
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