The internet of things is known to connect physical devices, vehicles and even buildings to each other by using electronics to collect and exchange data. For example, I want to know whether there is any milk left in the fridge, but I don’t want to open the door because that would mean the fridge needs to consume a little energy to cool it to the temperature it was before and we should all play our part in saving the planet. Samsung has a fridge that shows you whether or not you have any milk left in your fridge via a display on the door of your fridge.
Now, interesting as this may be, making an electronic device smart has been done for quiet some while now, but the guys over at Connecterra took it one step further. They developed the first ‘Dairy Monitor’ which is a which is a sensor cube attached to the neck of a dairy animal. This device enables customers to monitor animal health by tracking animal movements. Next to the hardware, the company offers software in the form of a cloud based analytics platform. Rather than just raw data, the Connecterra claims to provide the customer with insights in how to increase animal health and by that increasing productivity. One of the strong points of the platform is the data from multiple sources. Rather than just the insights from one herd from a single farm, the platform gathers the data on all customers’ farms, inducing a positive feedback loop. More data means better functionality, which should attract more customers who provide more data and the circle is complete.
The author is no expert on cow behaviour, but at the time of writing not much research can be found on the relation between cow movement and dairy productivity. And the website of Connecterra doesn’t offer any insights in the way this works neither. This means Connecterra can break new ground on productivity in the dairy productivity field of research, but at the same time, it could be a great risk to bet on a causal relationship without any scientific evidence. Either way, I cannot wait for the day that I can check my refrigerator on how far my cow grazed around for my bottle of milk.
Sources:
Connecterra: Internet of Things – Dairy Activity Monitor – Home Page
http://mashable.com/2016/01/05/samsung-fridge-amazon-alexa/#JYAjYZcSgkqo
Connecterra, ‘Fitbit voor koeien’, haalt 1,8 miljoen dollar op
Daan,
Interesting article. Why do you argue that it would be a great risk to bet on a causal relationship without scientific evidence? In my opinion Connecterra should be seen as an additional way of gathering data on a herd’s (physical) condition. It would never be a replacement for the actual farmer, what do you think?
Enjoy your day,
Olivier
Hi Daan! Thanks for your post. To be quite honest I find the “smart” fridge of Samsung even more interesting than the milk science of Connecterra. I would be very interested in knowing how the fridge actually monitors the products insight. Do you have to scan the bar codes of the products? Does the fridge have sensors/camera’s tracking it’s content? Do you have to manually register the content yourself? And what about empty containers? Sounds so cool though! More on topic.. What is thought to be the causal relationship between a cow’s movement and the milk produced by the particular cow? I can imagine that the quality of milk is caused by the cow’s diet rather than the steps he takes. Or is there a assumed relationship between movement and diet. That could explain Connecterra looking at movement. A lot of questions 🙂 Interesting to hear more about this in the future!