Transforming the lives of farmers: SenzMate IoT solutions

Over the past few years, the Internet has redefined industries such as media, retail and financial services. In the coming years, the Internet of Things revolution will dramatically alter manufacturing, energy, agriculture, transportation and other industrial sectors of the economy which. These industries together already account for nearly two-thirds of the global gross domestic product (GDP). This revolution will also fundamentally transform how people will work, through new interactions between humans and machines. Dubbed the Industrial Internet (of Things), this latest wave of technological change will bring unprecedented opportunities, along with new risks, to business and society.
Many inventions begin as a solution to a problem. Climate change is real and it cannot be controlled to save crops. However, the environment around the crops can be maintained. Most farmers water their crop to keep them cool, but this is costly and time on hired workers. Having heard and seen about this issue, two youngsters, who are only 25, came up with this remote technology that regulates the environment with the online support or by SMS.

Enter Johnirajh Antoncrisis and Jeyjenthan Tharmakulasingam, two products of the University of Moratuwa, who have started an IoT and M2M company called Senzmate. Being inseparable friends from the same village in The North, they built an IoT product that would help the agriculture sector. They did this because they understood the needs of the farmers, and their education in electronic engineering induced a passion to innovate and meet the farmers’ needs. This is how their IoT product, the Digital Irrigation Automation (DIA) was born.
So, how does this remote technology, DIA, work? An Enterprise/Environment Monitoring System (EMS) is fixed on the farm with sprinklers (and, if the farm is a greenhouse, the EMS will be fixed with automatic cooling fans and sprinklers). As its name suggests, this EMS will monitor the water level and the temperature around the farm. If the water level is low/high, an automated message will be sent to the farmer. The farmer could then control the sprinklers/cooling fans replying to the text. This would save farmers the cost of hiring workers to water their crops, and the time spent on it. Already, this system has been tested and set up in some farms in Jaffna, where John and Jeyjanthan have received positive responses.

Two years ago, DIA was just another project we saw at TADHack 2014. Then John and Jeyjanthan decided to take a risk by starting a company and bring DIA to the masses. Being motivated by the success, positive response from the farmers and the support from the Yarl IT Hub, John and Jeyjanthan started spending their spare time in innovating EMS based devices. These are devices that could be used in other sectors like hotels, parking, logistics, warehouses, supermarkets and offices.
This is where Senzmate born, and it started focusing on assisting the above-mentioned sectors. They have so far developed 20 EMS based products and are working on Oceanographic Monitoring System, which will assist the researchers and environmentalists on the temperature variation in the ocean.
Although similar above said products have been innovated abroad, it is not something one finds in the Sri Lankan market. It is time for the above said sectors to look up at this startup, for it is time to make use of IoT products, especially the Sri Lankan made devices improve their own companies.