Feed Management System
(dairy farming)

Intro

Nowadays Smart Farming technologies is a cutting edge of agriculture. Integrating innovative IoT, hardware and software solutions is the next step of modern farming on the way of increasing the effectiveness and profitability of the business.

Our client desired to get brand new, innovative solution for for dairy farm management based on integration with different hardware – weight controllers, temperature sensors, etc. The main purpose for the development: collect, process, manage and analyse all flows on farm or feed center using best web, mobile and hardware (IoT) solutions. Value for business – increase profit and decrease costs.

Customer provided an old version mobile app for Windows phone devices that had only a wired connection interface with a weight controller. There was no documentation and no access to sources of mobile application or backend. So we decided to start from scratch keeping in mind problems that customers faced with the current version.

There were 5 main stages of cooperation: development of detailed Software requirements specification (SRS) – 1 month; MVP development and integration on partners farm – 4 months; feedback gathering and support of MVP – 3 months; core development – 6-8 months; features development – still in progress (November 2020).

The reasons to develop new Feed Management System

Developed solutions

The main purpose of the first stage was – develop stable MVP for feed management and distribution for dairy farms. It must be based on integration of third party hardware – weight controller with mobile device (Android tablet) for further syncing to Backoffice. Basic analytics and reports were inseparable parts of the project.

Web application

The system allows digitizing farm management operations and tracking the processes instantly. Detailed analytics, reports and notification as an integral part.

Mobile application

Mobile application for easy and fast feed management processes. All the actions are tracked and logged in the database. Online and offline modes are available

Integration with hardware

Weight controller and other sensors provides data directly to a mobile app through WiFi or Bluetooth connection. Farm management processes become fast and easy.

What we do

Besides writing documentation and development tasks we resolved a lot of related issues. F.e. Customer had no hardware chosen as a basic tech solution, so our team took an active part in communication with different vendors, research connection, communication and data exchange protocols etc, checking what is better for Customer needs WiFi and/or Bluetooth based scale modules.
Truly said the R&D process was really exciting and each member of our team was deeply involved into.

	Here at CitrusDev

we provide extensive software

solutions for Smart Farming

How it works

Smart Farming is a modern approach towards farm management

The concept implies digitalization of farm management processes, deep data analysis, use of internet and communication technologies, software applications, integration with hardware and specific equipment.

Hardware Integration

Hardware for weight, location, temperature control is integrated with the Android mobile application. Hardware sends data to a mobile device via WIFI or Bluetooth connection.

Mobile application

Data from hardware is shown on a mobile device screen in real time. This increase operations accuracy and efficiency, and ensure production quality.

Back office management

Back Office receives data from a mobile device. Reports are generated automatically with a possibility to get comparison statistics for various metrics.

Problems and solutions

Dairy farming is quite far from the development of custom software solutions, that is why our team faced the problem that there were a lot of specific tasks and issues that needed deep involvement into the project domain. These issues were solved due to deep integration with Customer’s R&D team. The other issue related to real farming processes was UX/UI design of the mobile application with high usability and focus on farm staff, real environment and conditions. Talking about technical and engineering issues we should highlight: