Project Description

Seeed Partners with OPEN in the Global IoT Education Initiative to Promote Global Sustainable Agriculture

We are excited to share the news: Seeed is honored to join the partnership with OPEN (One Planet Education Network) in the global IoT education initiative that aims at bringing the next-generation technologies into classrooms and communities, guiding the students and community residents to learn how they can solve the real-world challenges such as food shortage, environmental pollution, water issues, and effectively adapt to and help mitigate climate change impacts.

Dr. Wednaud J. Ronelus’s Classroom in NYC Timothy Dwight Elementary School where OPEN IoT curricula projects are settled (Learn more at Alchemist Club School & Studios)

We are happy that OPEN has selected Seeed Industrial IoT products SenseCAP as an important part of many of its curriculums that adopt IoT technologies in sustainable agriculture and forestry, smart garden, and vertical hydroponics, etc. SenseCAP products including LoRaWAN soil moisture & temperature sensor, LoRaWAN light intensity sensor, etc., are now being deployed for indoor soil experimentation, outdoor test plots, and hydroponics projects at several schools and sites in New York City, Massachusetts in the US and at schools in NSW, Australia.

With its great interoperability with other LoRaWAN devices, SenseCAP sensors work with Helium, the people’s network conveniently. These SenseCAP sensors are monitoring and collecting data of parameters that are critical to the growth of plants, and the teaching of important transferable future job skillsets for our young students.

These data sets are then transmitted to Helium’s hotspots and to the cloud, shared with other OPEN students and OPEN supporting scientists globally. By making the data available for students in OPEN’s partner schools around the world, it creates platforms and opportunities for students and farm communities ranging from New York to Goma, DR Congo, to Liberia and to Aboriginal Australia Outback to share observations, knowledge, skills, and experience in solving real-world problems. This is community-applied learning, but on a global basis, thanks to OPEN’s Internet-connected international school network. This work will also contribute to helping achieve the UN’s 2030 sustainable development goals (SDGs).

Seeed SenseCAP Soil Moisture & Temperature Sensor has currently been deployed and tested in Teachers’ homes, as most students are in remote learning mode due to COVID-19.

“We selected Seeed Studio and their industrial level technologies for their quality, durability, form factor, ease of use, and very affordable cost. Having worked with Seeed over the intervening months, it is truly their service that sets them apart; from the sales to the technical and support teams they are a gold standard for others in the industry! They are incredibly responsive, thorough, and flexible in dealing with changing customer needs, and for custom development. The staff is so nice and polite, they are a joy to work with on a regular basis.  

We work in primary to secondary education internationally and the Seeed team has been so supportive in getting us set up in the early stages, as some teachers who are our end users are sometimes not that technically sophisticated. So patience is a word that comes to mind as well. IoT is central to our future STEM education programs and for 21st-century schooling. So we look forward to a long-term partnership with Seeed as our STEM Learning and education technology business expands, and our application set grows.”

George Newman – Founder – CEO – One Planet Education Network (OPEN)

While sustainable agriculture is one of the main curricula programs at OPEN, there are many other programs such as environmental monitoring, social studies, school connectivity, music, and others at OPEN (and more coming!). In the near future, Seeed sensors will also be deployed in DR Congo to detect CO2 concentration, thus providing data to monitor possible volcano eruption in Goma city. With these insights, it will help local communities prepare in advance for evacuation in case of eruptions.

SenseCAP LoRaWAN Soil Moisture & Temperature Sensors which have been tested in NYC

By making educational programs and resources accessible to schools and communities, OPEN, together with local partners is able to guide both teachers, students, and residents from different corners of the world to explore science, mathematics, music, arts, and humanities with the techniques and technologies, thus coming up with possible solutions that are catering to tackling the problems and building a sustainable and resilient future for us all.

Currently, OPEN’s curriculums and projects are in action in 40+ schools in the United States, Australia Liberia, Kenya, DR Congo, Malawi, Nigeria, and Haiti, with plans to be available in China, Thailand, Japan, Mali, and other countries in the near future. We are happy to be a part of this great partnership, and looking forward to closely collaborating with OPEN, together with other partners such as Helium, to promote scientific and technological literacy through different continents and cultures.

Stay tuned for more updates about our further cooperation with OPEN and Helium!

About OPEN

One Planet Education Network (OPEN) is a social enterprise with HQ in Scituate, USA. It’s a leading provider of educational programs that engage and inspire all kids to develop critical thinking and problem-solving skills they’ll need to lead productive lives and tackle 21st-century Global Challenge issues such as food security and sustainable community development.

OPEN’s mission is to transform teaching and learning by combining the power and utility of IoT and new technologies such as AI and Machine Learning, Virtual and Augmented Reality, and have the students directly apply their learning to local and the global community’s needs. OPEN challenges all learners and with programs that inspire a 24×7 passion for learning that will support continued skills development to prepare our students well for the just-in-time learning global economy.

About Helium

Helium Network was co-founded by Shawn Fanning and Amir Hallem in 2013 with the vision of building the world’s first peer-to-peer wireless network. It provides long-range, low-power, bi-directional communication for LoRaWAN devices. Its innovation Helium Blockchain is designed to support a more efficient and secure application network while rewarding anyone who acts as a network operator, hence Helium is also known as The People’s Network.

About Seeed

Seeed is a tech company with HQ in Shenzhen, China. By providing open hardware, fast prototyping, and agile manufacturing services, Seeed makes hardware more accessible and lowers the threshold for hardware innovation; and at the same time accumulates resources and expertise in creating products for vertical industries. Seeed envisions to empower traditional industries with best-in-class IIoT solutions for smart meteorology, smart agriculture, smart city, and other environmental monitoring scenarios.