I am a rancher and I want a tool to monitor my pastures remotely because knowing the state of my herd is important economically
I needed to be sure my bison herd was still there when I was not able to physically be there to check the pastures.
Title: Open Source Wireless Field/Garden Sensor Node
Purpose: The Open Source Wireless Field/Garden Sensor Node's intent is for the node to be deployed remotely to a location in your field or garden and monitor the soil temperature, air temperature, humidity, luminosity, and soil moisture levels. The raw cost of the node is intended to be under $20.
Current State 8-Mar-2015: Soil and air temperatures and humidity sensors are active on all nodes. In addition they are all now solar powered. Also PCBs arrived from OSH Park; however, I ran out of solder paste :) A prototype soil moisture sensor has been prototyped but not deployed on a sensor node yet. Also my blog has some more info related to the sensor node theacrelab.blogspot.com
Short term to do: add luminosity and soil moisture probe
Long term to do: redesign case