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In May this year, Charles Sturt University and Food Agility announced that they will partner to build the Global Digital Farm, Australia’s first fully-automated commercial farm, at Charles Sturt’s AgriPark in Wagga Wagga.

The Global Digital Farm will demonstrate the future of farming through pioneering projects involving robotics and artificial intelligence and by creating new sustainability and carbon models to drive improvements in farming practice.

Connectivity is essential for many of these technologies and for this reason it is fitting that the first of these projects to be announced involves Zetifi providing long-range Wi-Fi connectivity that can be accessed right across the farm.

Zetifi will work alongside researchers at Charles Sturt University and University of Technology Sydney to develop antenna arrays that can be fitted to mobile and stationary farming equipment to provide long-range communication. Tractors and trucks will become roving Wi-Fi devices with a range of up to 5 kilometres to provide farm-wide internet coverage.

Food Agility Chief Scientist, Professor David Lamb, said the new technology would be enabling infrastructure for Australian agriculture.

“Improving connectivity for Australian farmers is the single most critical factor in driving productivity and sustainability in agriculture,” Professor Lamb said.

“Farmers increasingly rely on high-level data analytics, automation and networks of devices that talk to each other over vast distances. This new technology will connect people and devices far beyond the farm gate and will be the backbone for the future of autonomous farming.”

CEO of Zetifi, Dan Winson, said farmers deserved the same connectivity for their businesses as those in urban areas.

“I’ve seen farmers perform the most amazing acts of contortion, hanging out tractor windows and climbing up ladders, trying to get a decent connection,” Mr Winson said.

“This will be an Australian-designed solution, made for Australian conditions to deliver connectivity wherever it’s needed on the farm. It will complement NBN wireless broadband and satellite coverage, helping farmers to transfer critical data across our vast landscapes.”

The technology will be a combination of adapted off-the-shelf and bespoke solutions, including a custom antenna array that is being developed in collaboration with experts from the University of Technology Sydney.

Co-Director, RF and Communication Technologies Laboratory (RFCT) at UTS and Sensing Innovations Lead at Food Agility CRC, Dr Negin Shariati explains the technology in development.

“At the heart of communication system which provides long-range connectivity is an antenna. RFCT-UTS researchers will design new types of antennas integrated with custom RF module for enabling long-range communications in smart farms, ” Dr Negin Shariata said.

Zetifi has been awarded $396,000 via the Federal Government’s Advanced Manufacturing Growth Centre to commercialise the ZetiGate – an innovative wireless network gateway that uses software-defined networking to seamlessly combine the speed of low-earth orbit satellite technology with the reliability of a backup 3G/4G LTE network.

Low-earth orbit satellites are 60 times closer to earth than traditional satellites and by reducing the distance that data has to travel and serving a smaller number of users, the technology offers the promise of higher speeds, more data and lower latency than traditional satellite connections.

The project will focus this emerging technology on the needs of the Australian food and beverage sector as poor connectivity currently limits the application of digital technology during key stages of the supply chain for regional food and beverage producers. The benefits of improved connectivity and digitisation include greater transparency for food provenance and traceability via real-time monitoring and the use IoT monitoring data to guide critical manufacturing or processing decisions.

By addressing the reliability and coverage issues of existing technologies, the ZetiGate delivers the fast and reliable connectivity that food and beverage manufacturers need to fully embrace digitisation throughout the supply chain.

You can read more about the project at https://www.amgc.org.au/project/zetigate-connecting-the-food-beverage-supply-chain/

Zetifi is excited to have joined the recently established Australian AgriTech Association which aims to foster new connections amongst farmers, investors and innovators and cement Australia’s position as a world-class agritech ecosystem.

Technology partnerships with farmers and companies such as Case IH and AuctionsPlus have already played an important role in Zetifi’s development and as CEO & Founder Dan Winson explains, providing a connectivity platform that enables farmers to embrace digital agritech applications is central to the company’s identity and mission.

“Zetifi was founded on the realisation that farmers were poorly served by traditional telecommunications technologies – plenty of people were developing digital solutions for farmers but not nearly as many trying to solve the connectivity issues that were preventing them from adopting this technology in the first place,” said Dan

“We’re based in regional Australia so having easy access to farmers has meant we’ve been able to speak with them directly and develop solutions that are specifically suited to this environment.

Whilst some of the innovations have required developing custom software to make installation and support possible in remote locations, some of the most important lessons have been the most basic, as Product Development Manager John Lucas explains.

“What farmers actually want is pretty simple – connectivity that’s resilient, is available where they’re working, and won’t give up on them because of some dust or mud. That’s what we set about building, and we’re now confident that our suite of products can meet these needs in most environments.”

Zetifi is unique among association members in that as well as serving farmers, it’s also providing better internet solutions for the home but Paul believes that the number of farmers needing a solution to implement an agtech application is set to increase in the years ahead.

“Not everyone that contacts Zetifi is thinking about agritech but we know that a lot of them are. Some of our calls come from people that just want better internet for home schooling or entertainment but over 40% of our customers tell us that they’re using our networks for on-farm digital technology,” said Paul.

“We fully expect this number to increase in the years to come as farmers continue to embrace new agtech solutions and things like autonomous vehicles that are being developed right here by companies like SwarmFarm become a regular sight in the paddock.”

To find out more about the work of the Australian AgriTech Association, please visit ausagritech.org or follow them via their social channels on Twitter, LinkedIn, and Facebook.

Hicks Beef is a leading family-owned premium stock breeder based near Holbrook, NSW. Poor coverage around the property has been a major impediment to modernising their operations through connected agricultural solutions. Previous efforts to resolve their connectivity issues using other technologies had failed, forcing them to rely on slow satellite internet for home and office connectivity.

Connectivity Problems

Despite having a 4G tower located close to the farm, nearby hills blocked the signal from reaching important parts of the property, including a cattle yard and the farmhouse. Manager Tom Hicks said coverage was so poor that you could only “get a text message out”.

While it was possible to receive SMS messages, Tom reported he would have to leave the cattle yard as calls would often drop out.

“If a staff member rings you or someone needed to ask a question, you had to leave the yard, get in your car and drive a kilometre to where you could get signal. I was constantly having to leave cattle yards to ring people,” said Tom.

Hicks Beef also experienced difficulties hosting online cattle auctions on the property as the copper-wiring between the farmhouse and cattle yard provided patchy connectivity and signal boosters didn’t work properly. The 4G reception was weak too. This limited the accessibility of bull sales via the AuctionsPlus platform and impeded Tom’s ability to access remote customer markets.

To help manage vital livestock data, Hicks Beef uses an RFID system to electronically tag and monitor cattle, enabling vets to access up-to-date animal information when assessing stock. The system has the capability to synchronise information to the cloud in real-time. Weak mobile coverage meant Tom was unable to make use of real-time information as data transfers would drop out, so at the end of each day Tom had to slowly upload the data via satellite from the farmhouse. It also created other costly risks, especially when it came to vet bills.

“If someone is assessing cattle, it can be quite time-consuming and expensive. If you have a device crash, you can lose important information resulting in vet assessments needing to be redone. Provided there is connectivity, the app can instantaneously sync the information to the cloud so the data is always up to date.“

Solution

Tom needed a solution that was fast and reliable. He learnt about Zetifi when an AuctionsPlus representatives explained they’d implemented Zetifi’s wireless technology to resolve their connectivity issues for online saleyard auctions. Impressed by the ability to establish a long-range, high-bandwidth connection in an area normally considered to be a blackspot, he contacted Zetifi to enquire about installing a permanent solution for the farm.

A Zetifi Gateway was installed on the roof of a shed overlooking the main yard by an electrician. It captures the ordinarily poor 4G signal and creates a high-bandwidth Wi-Fi network throughout the workshop, cattle yard, house and paddocks providing broadband internet access and Wi-Fi calling for uninterrupted phone calls. Wi-Fi speeds in excess of 20 megabits per second are now the norm within the yard, farmhouse and paddocks around the property, ensuring Hicks Beef is always connected.

Result

The availability of wireless broadband in the yard and paddocks has improved productivity and safety on the farm. Hicks Beef is now able to make full use of their investment in RFID herd management, as the system continually syncs and safely backs up data to the cloud. The connectivity also means that veterinarians and other workers can quickly access extra information and resources when assessing cattle without, having to leave the yard to retrieve information or risk inconvenient device crashes.

The scalability and ease of expansion enabled by Zetifi’s modular system design on this property has raised the possibility of exploring additional connected devices, such as applications for water monitoring systems and Wi-Fi connected electric fence units.

A 200% improvement to Tom’s home and office internet speeds means his family’s devices can now operate consistently, even during cloud cover and wet weather. The network effortlessly facilitates high-definition video streaming, video calls and large file transfers, enabling the Hicks family to benefit from advances in household technology while also supporting the connectivity demands of this forward-thinking agribusiness operator.

On Sunday 22 August 2021, Zetifi was announced as a recipient of $932,850 in funding from the Australian Government as part of the 5G Innovation Initiative.

This funding will enable Zetifi to upgrade our existing range of long-range portable gateway devices to 5G and rigorously evaluate applications the 5G network in commercial trials with various agricultural industry stakeholders across Australia. Our long-range Wi-Fi capability will increase the usable range of high-speed and low-latency 5G in rural and remote areas.

The trials will showcase applications of 5G connectivity in autonomous farm vehicles, advanced smart-farm machinery, on-farm auctions, drone data transmission, and the needs of roaming rural workforces. These trials will be delivered in partnership with a large number of leading agtech and agribusiness partner companies including Case IH, SwarmFarm Robotics, Elders, Nutrien Ag, Delta Agribusiness and AuctionsPlus.

Each trial will be comprehensively evaluated by Birchip Cropping Group and the findings will be published as a series of case studies showcasing the benefits of 5G for different agribusinesses across Australia.

Through demonstrating the benefits of 5G technology in agriculture, the project will raise the awareness of 5G in rural and regional Australia and encourage telecommunications carriers to accelerate the deployment of 5G infrastructure in rural locations.

We’ve all heard a lot about 5G. In this article, Zetifi CEO & Founder Dan Winson separates fact from fiction and hype from hope to provide a straightforward explanation of 5G technology and its potential for digital agriculture and regional Australians.

If you asked me a year ago what impact 5G will have on Australian agriculture I’d probably have responded ‘very little’.

Ever since the 2G CDMA network was decommissioned, the telecommunications industry seems to have been trading off range for speed, leaving large numbers of primary producers with little or no coverage.

With the 3G shutdown just around the corner, I’d have told you that farmers should expect more of the same; faster speeds in populated areas and less coverage in the bush. But, it is beginning to look like I was wrong.

5G, at least some parts of the standard, has the potential to bring massive benefits to producers, and we’re excited to be at the forefront of testing the limits of this technology.

To understand what’s going on we need to unpack a few technical details.

5G is a collection of technologies and standards – we can’t have a sensible conversation about ‘5G’ without clarifying which part of the ‘5G’ standard we are talking about.

Most of the media coverage and hype is around the game-changing speeds, reliability and latency that will be offered by millimetre wave (mmWave) and mid-band 5G, but unfortunately these speeds are at the expense of decreased range. What is more interesting for farmers and for other businesses in the bush, is low-band 5G.

Low-band 5G is expected to offer increased speeds without the range tradeoffs of mid-band and mmWave.

If you hated science in high school you might want to skip this paragraph but to understand what 5G can and can’t offer people in remote areas it is helpful to understand the basic physics around radio frequency transmission… stay with me, it’s easier than it sounds. Essentially, lower frequency waves are bigger, travel further, and penetrate through obstacles like trees more easily at a given power level, however all other things being equal lower frequency waves can’t carry as much information as higher frequency waves. While a low-cost handheld UHF CB radio that works at a frequency of 477MHz can carry a scratchy voice signal for a few kilometres, to get the same range out of our 2412MHz Wi-Fi repeaters we need to use high-gain antennas, high-power signal amplifiers and sensitive receivers – it’s worth it though because unlike UHF radios, our Wi-Fi devices allow broadband internet access, video streaming and clear voice calls over Wi-Fi calling.

So while a lightning-fast mmWave cell running at 26,000 MHz installed on top of an average farmhouse would have a hard time reaching the mailbox, it is just the thing if you want to connect tens of thousands of people jammed into the MCG. It’s horses for courses and the 5G low-band networks that are starting to come online on the frequencies already used for 3G and 4G in rural areas should offer similar coverage with increased speeds and lower latency. These connections will open up a range of exciting opportunities for autonomous machinery, precision agriculture and agtech in general.

While Zetifi’s main job in 2021 remains providing producers with faster internet and better connectivity across the farm using Wi-Fi, we are betting big that 5G will drive the adoption of agtech in the years to come and we’re excited to be in at the ground floor.

Footnote

On 22 August 2021, Zetifi was announced as a recipient of $932,850 in funding from the Australian Government as part of the 5G Innovation Initiative. This funding will support rigorous testing of Zetifi’s innovative, ruggedised long-range 5G gateways in agricultural applications across various regional, rural and remote locations, and showcase the productivity benefits that high bandwidth, low latency connectivity can deliver to primary producers and the wider agriculture sector.

On Thursday 15 July, Zetifi brought together 30 leading Australian and international AgTech companies for a fast-paced discussion of the latest and greatest on-farm digital technology options for farmers.

We’ve published an edited recording of this session on YouTube. The session will introduce you to some of the most exciting new technology developments in agriculture, followed by a discussion of the current trends and barriers to AgTech adoption.

After a busy couple of months and some unexpected stress caused by weather delays and global supply chain shortages, we are pleased to report that we have now installed and connected all 50 trial sites for the Alternative Voice Services Trial (AVST) Program.

The AVST Program is a wonderful opportunity for Zetifi to develop and validate our technology and processes as we scale the business. We’ve been able to test our ability to design, manufacture and deploy Wi-Fi solutions in a wide range of locations and coverage areas. At times, we probably wondered why we’d made it so hard for ourselves, but the lessons we’ve learnt are invaluable and will continue to inform our product development and design processes well into the future.

Some of the most difficult sites we took on during this project involved very hilly and remote properties with no mobile coverage inside or outside at the main residence. To provide these triallists with fast, reliable and low-latency internet and Wi-Fi, we’ve installed standalone solar-powered ZetiCell small cells on a hillside near the house so we can then send this signal to the house and surrounding area via a point-to-point link.

Another very unexpected challenge that we encountered and overcame during the rollout of our AVST trial sites was a global supply chain shortages that required us to source new suppliers and even apply some of our own ingenuity to design and manufacture our own masts. A steel shortage meant that many of the poles and brackets that we’d previously used to install masts and antennas were unavailable. Our quick-thinking and clever production team had to work overtime to design, test and manufacture our own masts, along with custom roof and antenna brackets to keep the project on schedule. True to the saying that “necessity is the mother of invention”, something that began as a critical need has resulted in a new mast design that is significantly better and cheaper than those which we were purchasing from suppliers. Among many other advantages, our new masts are lighter and can be transported in a small cylindrical box and they guarantee that antennas are installed with the correct orientation every time.

It was a bitterly cold day but I suppose that’s only fitting for the inaugural Winter Bites Festival event, and it certainly didn’t stop the crowd from enjoying an evening of food, wine and music!

The only thing that did threaten the event in the lead-up was a lack of mobile phone coverage. Without service, the organisers were concerned that the vendors in attendance wouldn’t able to operate their point-of-sale units. The event was held at Courabyra Wines near Tumbarumba in the Snowy Valleys region of NSW – an area that is still recovering from the property and business losses caused by the devasting bushfires of 2020.

Our team were very pleased to swing into action and help out by providing Wi-Fi for the event. To achieve this we hooked up a detachable mast to our display trailer and within 20 minutes of arriving on site, we’d erected the mast and connected our ZetiBase to provide Wi-Fi across the whole event site for the many food and drink transactions that followed!

The 2021 Field Days season is upon us! The Riverina Field Days are being held at the Griffith Showgrounds on Thursday 14 and Friday 15 May. As a proud Riverina business, it seems quite appropriate that our first hit out for the year is in the second-best town in the Riverina (just behind Wagga Wagga of course!).

We’ll be debuting our newly fitted-out display trailer with a schmick new decal and other cool additions to show off our home internet and Wi-Fi solutions for farmers and rural residents.

Please stop by and say g’day to Luke or Rob if you’d like to know more about how we can connect your home or farm with fast and reliable Wi-Fi.

Zetifi’s vision for solving connectivity in rural and remote areas includes the provision of multiple public access Wi-Fi small cells to fill in the gaps at known blackspots. Being able to deliver on this strategy relies on many complementary ideas and innovations, including ‘sleepy’ Wi-Fi power management, proprietary software to remotely deploy and manage our networks, and ruggedised farm-tough product design and construction. Over the last 12 months, we’ve had the opportunity to test and validate many aspects of our approach and technology as part of an extensive connectivity pilot project with Birchip Cropping Group (BCG). Many of BCG’s members have significant connectivity problems and they were interested in investigating the possibility for farm-wide and region-wide Wi-Fi from Zetifi as part of the solution. Whilst it won’t solve the problem on its own, we recently installed a single standalone solar-powered ZetiCell along Birchip-Sea Lake Road as part of this project to demonstrate the potential of our small cells in rural and remote blackspots. The small cell consists of a ZetiCell gateway mounted on a ZetiPod, which is a specially designed structure that is built to withstand rough treatment from livestock and can be delivered and deployed without the need for heavy machinery or site preparation. Within 30 minutes of arriving on site, we’d installed a permanent long-range Wi-Fi connection that’s ready for use.

Minister for Planning and Public Spaces Rob Stokes announced at an event at the Sydney Startup Hub last night that four NSW companies, including Zetifi, will share in $5 million from the NSW Government Physical Sciences Fund which will provide funding to bring their innovative technologies to market.

The Physical Sciences Fund (PSF) is a NSW Government competitive development and commercialisation program run by the Office of the NSW Chief Scientist & Engineer. The PSF aims to deliver significant social, economic and environmental benefits to NSW by providing financial support for the development of new and innovative devices and systems across the branches of the physical sciences and engineering, including physics, chemistry, astronomy and the earth sciences.

“This fund supports the work of some of the State’s best minds by ensuring their ingenious technologies are developed and commercialised,” said Mr Stokes. “The innovations will be translated into devices and applications which will make lives easier for communities across the State.”

Zetifi will receive $1.47 million to develop scalable manufacturing capacity for our ZetiCell and ZetiRover technologies.

As Zetifi CEO & Founder Dan Winson explains, this funding will enable us to manufacture our products at the scale needed to support our growth and expand to new markets.

“This generous funding will support the commercialisation of Zetifi’s technology and help to deliver much needed connectivity solutions for farmers and families in rural and remote areas. The grant funding will be used to scale up our manufacturing facility in Wagga so we can deliver our existing solutions at scale to the Australian and US markets making a real difference to farmers struggling with unreliable mobile or internet services.” said Dan.

For more information about the Physical Sciences Fund and future funding rounds, please visit https://www.chiefscientist.nsw.gov.au/funding/research-and-development/nsw-physical-sciences-fund