Development of a mote for horticulture based on the SDI-12 standard

GAIA is a new kind of mote specially designed for horticultural farming. It is based on the SDI-12 standard, which allows the connection of the mote to a large number of agricultural instrumentation. The mote is built around a 16-bit Msp430f1611 micro-controller operating at a clock frequency of 32 MHz and accessing up to 10 KB of on-chip RAM. Wireless communication is achieved by the Chipcon CC2420 radio, which operates in the 2.4 GHz ISM band, and is compliant with the IEEE 802.15.4 standard. This mote was developed to monitor broccoli crops situated on a farm in South-East Spain. This paper shows the main requirements from which the design was developed. Its associated hardware architecture and software platform are presented. Finally, some test results obtained from the final system are presented.