We have been frequently asked: do we retrofit existing greenhouses with ONDO Smart Farming solutions?

Yes, we do! Even if your greenhouse is already up and running, we will integrate ONDO Precision Farming technology with your existing equipment! Which is more – we will make sure your ONDO automation can grow with you!

We want to illustrate this via our recent customer case:

An ONDO customer wants to extend the usage of ONDO to his existing and new greenhouse units

One of our recent customers – Greenhouses Lazov (check out his customer video) – is an example of a customer that adopts new technologies and expands at a truly quick pace! He started off his farm with a couple of greenhouses, requesting ONDO Precision farming technology for one of them, to find out the results and get a feel of ONDO solutions. That’s perfectly fine and we understand that, when a new solution is entering the market, customers are looking to test it out themselves, get a feel of the support provided, evaluate the results for, etc. We even encourage that, since no one can convince you more than your own experience, right?

Only a month later Greenhouses Lazov, seeing the considerable time and resources being saved by his ONDO for Greenhouses solution, reached out to have their second, just-built greenhouse integrated with ONDO. And shortly after, they decided to retrofit their third and oldest greenhouse and reached out to have ONDO integrated with that. 

We are happy that the results the customer started seeing with ONDO convinced them to automate all greenhouse premises. What were the challenges in this case?

The Challenges

✓ Integrate with different greenhouse setup and manufacturers

As it often happens, a customer may have a different set up, manufacturer, etc for each of his greenhouse units. This was just the case with Greenhouses Lazov, who had a different set up for each of his 3 greenhouses, hence ONDO had to control and automate many different greenhouse climate control devices. The latest greenhouse premise was a very well-equipped and modern greenhouse from IMA Invernaderos. Our team makes sure to keep up with any greenhouse innovations though so, integration with the new greenhouse was as smooth as usual.

Which is more, shortly after integrating ONDO with the new customer’s greenhouses, we also integrated a weather station in the customer’s ONDO setup. The plan is to keep adding more climate control units to be automated with ONDO.

✓ Stick to a single point of control

To ensure single point of control for all greenhouse units, including the newly added ones, we aimed at providing an extension to the existing ONDO controller. This required custom work and on-site adjustments, but – customizations for customers are something included within ONDO integration services. Still, we do advise our customers, if they have a plan for future growth and automation of more greenhouse premises, in addition to their initial premises, to let us know, so we can consider this in the design phase of the customer controller equipment.

The extension we developed is fully reusable for other greenhouses as well.

✓ Minimize the costs for the extra automations

We are aware that farmers are making huge investments when it comes to greenhouse expansion, and we want to make sure ONDO is immediately available for those extra greenhouses as well. Thanks to ONDO’s business model, when purchasing ONDO customers can opt for low upfront costs and then annual subscriptions, allowing them to automate their farms without breaking the bank. Any extra automations for the add-on units will then have little impact on the annual subscription fee.

We are happy that most of our existing customers decide to keep expanding and upgrading their ONDO solutions, shortly after becoming our clients. We have considered this usage of the system and thanks to that, are flexible to respond. (Stay tuned for another ONDO customer story where a customer came back for more!)

We also appreciate that most of our customers refer other farmers to us. This only comes to speak of the value customers see in ONDO Precision farming technology, and their appreciation of the product feasibility, no matter how quickly the customer would decide to expand and modernize their agricultural business. 

Thanks for the trust, ONDO farmers!