It’s been a busy summer with numerous ONDO installations and ongoing communication with you, our customers and partners, both current and potential ones. We’ve been actively getting feedback on the ONDO solutions you are using, reflecting your needs for functionality add-ons and new feature requests in our plans for next developments.
Based on requests from our customers, we have also planned and finalized the development of the next ONDO features. What are the latest functionality add-ons in ONDO? Read on!
Activating vent closure in case of strong rain
Strong rain can be damaging for the greenhouse crops. Increased leaf wetness combined with high temperatures creates a favorable environment for the occurrence of numerous plant diseases. In addition, strong rain combined with strong wind can severely damage the greenhouse vents.
ONDO climate control automation already includes a feature that closes the vents upon strong wind, with a user-defined step that adjusts the % closure based on the strength of the wind. Now we have also introduced the option to close the vents based on rain.
Activating the rain protection requires having a weather station ONDO Weather integrated with your greenhouse. Depending on whether you have a rain detection or rainfall quantity sensor in your weather station, you can activate the automated vent protection as soon as rain has been detected or as soon as the rainfall quantity has exceeded a certain threshold, over a user-defined period of time. For example, you can choose to have the vents automatically close as soon as 1 l/m2 of rain has been received over a period of 5 minutes.
The rain protection is automatically disabled upon seized rain or rainfall quantity subsiding to levels below the threshold.
Automated mixing of the fertilizers used in a recipe using Air Bubble Jet device
The Air Bubble Jet provided by ONDO enables the injection of air in tanks with water-soluble fertilizer, ensuring a homogenous fertilizer emulsion. The usage of an Air Bubble Jet prevents the creation of sediment in the fertilizer tanks. Thus the farmers can ensure that 100% of the nutrients contained in the fertilizer will be able to pass through the fertigation system and be delivered to the plants.
Preventing the creation of sediments in the fertilizer tanks also helps to avoid clogging of the drip irrigation system, of the dosing channels of the fertilization system or of the water meter, which leads to numerous alarms and affects the smooth completion of the precise fertigation process.
So far the ONDO farmers with an Air Bubble Jet system had manual control of the system. The new auto option allows for automatic mixing of the fertilizers before the fertilization has started or during this process, or both, using interval or non-stop mixing. The user can define default mixing settings for each of the dosing channels in the fertigation system and then override the defaults as needed, inside each recipe using the respective dosing channels.
As usual, all automated actions for the Air bubble jet functionality are tracked and reported, so the users can adjust the behavior of the automatic option per the specifics of the fertilizers, the fertigation system or the plant needs.
We are working on more new ONDO functionality – stay tuned for more news from our technology team soon!