IoT Sensors & Rural Connectivity
IoT & Connectivity: For Advisers & Agents
What IoT & Connectivity changes for agronomists, agents, vets and consultants.
Advisers need scoped access, defensible records and a way to work across a client base without re-keying. Sensor networks are only as useful as the connectivity carrying them, and rural connectivity remains the binding constraint on UK farm technology. This module manages sensor deployment and calibration, chooses the right transport for each location, and enforces the offline-first behaviour that makes the whole platform usable in a field with no signal.
In their words
What the job actually looks like
These are not marketing personas. Each one is a distinct job with a distinct constraint, and the module is designed so that solving one does not create work for the others.
Rural connectivity adviser
Infrastructure planning
Needs measured coverage data rather than published maps.
- Survey actual connectivity across the holding
- Select transport per monitoring location
- Place gateways and test coverage
- Deploy and calibrate sensors
Store manager
Grain and potato stores
Needs alarms delivered even when broadband is down.
- Select transport per monitoring location
- Place gateways and test coverage
- Deploy and calibrate sensors
- Configure alarms and escalation
Field operator
No signal in most fields
Needs the app to work anyway and sync later.
- Place gateways and test coverage
- Deploy and calibrate sensors
- Configure alarms and escalation
- Monitor data quality and battery
End to end
How IoT & Connectivity runs, start to finish
The module is modelled as a state machine, so at any point the business knows exactly which stage every record is at and what has to happen next.
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1
Survey actual connectivity across the holding
This is where the record starts, and getting it right here removes work at every later stage.
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2
Select transport per monitoring location
The platform prompts only for what this stage genuinely needs, and carries everything forward.
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3
Place gateways and test coverage
Conflicts with scheme rules, regulatory windows and existing commitments are flagged here rather than discovered later.
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4
Deploy and calibrate sensors
Capture works offline, so this stage is completed in the field rather than remembered afterwards.
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5
Configure alarms and escalation
Everything recorded at this point becomes evidence automatically, in every format that will later ask for it.
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6
Monitor data quality and battery
This is the stage most businesses currently do twice, once for the operation and once for the paperwork.
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7
Maintain offline capability for field work
Results feed the whole-farm view, so the effect of this stage is visible against the rest of the business.
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8
Review and expand the network
The cycle closes here, and what is learned is carried into next season's plan rather than lost.
Capabilities
What IoT & Connectivity does
Every capability below is built on the same underlying record, so entering something once is enough for it to appear wherever it is needed.
Record and plan
- Sensor register with location, type, calibration and battery status
- Transport selection guidance across cellular, LoRaWAN, satellite and wired
- Gateway placement planning using terrain and building obstruction
Operate and monitor
- Offline-first data capture with conflict-free deferred synchronisation
- Sensor calibration schedule and drift detection
- Soil moisture, temperature, weather station and tank level monitoring
Comply and evidence
- Building environment sensing for stores, glasshouses and livestock housing
- Alarm and escalation configuration with multi-channel delivery
- Connectivity survey recording actual measured signal across the holding
Analyse and improve
- Low-bandwidth and SMS fallback for critical alerts
- Sensor data quality scoring with outlier rejection
- Power and battery management with replacement forecasting
Find
Find contractors and dealers
Filter by type, nation, distance and accreditation. Results are ranked by relevance to your holding once your holding record exists, and alphabetically before that.
6 records shown from the platform’s own register
- Module Machinery, Fleet & Contracting Flagship
- Module Precision Agriculture, Guidance & Variable Rate Core
- Module Robotics & Field Automation Core
- Module Drones & Aerial Survey Core
- Module Satellite & Remote Sensing Core
- Module IoT Sensors & Rural Connectivity Core
Worked example
How a business like yours would use IoT & Connectivity
The problem: Needs to know which transport will actually work at each location.
What they do
- Survey actual connectivity across the holding
- Select transport per monitoring location
- Place gateways and test coverage
- Deploy and calibrate sensors
What changes
- Sensors reporting reliably
- Data completeness percentage
- Alarm delivery success rate
This is an illustrative worked example built from the module design, not a customer reference. Named case studies are published only with the business's written consent.
What we are hearing
The problems people describe to us
These are composite statements drawn from user research conversations, not attributed customer quotes. We publish named references only with written consent.
I am not short of software. I am short of one place where the same field means the same thing in all of it.
The scheme closed on a Tuesday evening. I had the application half built. Nobody told me the budget was nearly gone.
We farm on both sides of the border. Everything takes twice as long and I still cannot see the whole position on one screen.
Audit week costs me three days. Every single record they ask for is already written down somewhere on this farm.
Measurement
How you will know it is working
The module reports against these measures from the day it is switched on, so the value is demonstrable rather than assumed.
- 01Sensors reporting reliably
- 02Data completeness percentage
- 03Alarm delivery success rate
- 04Offline captures synchronised
- 05Battery replacements forecast accurately
Free assessment
Find out where you stand in about ten minutes
A structured assessment producing a scored report with a prioritised list of what to fix first, and what it is worth fixing.