Modern agriculture demands real-time land and crop analysis, drones and geolocation systems, and equipment and greenhouse cultivation software. To make these new capabilities operational, devices require reliable connectivity.
Souriau designs complete interconnection systems for harsh environments.
According to Alexandre Lagrange, Industrial Product Manager at Souriau, smart agriculture "allows the analysis of needs, the optimization of crops and the improvement of yields."
For example, lighting is an emerging market driven by a need to continuously increase production and productivity. The demand has pushed the development of intelligent and sophisticated lamps. With new technologies such as horticultural LED bulbs that can provide variable spectra depending on the plant's growth stage and consume less energy, agricultural lighting has seen an increase in activity and encouraging results in terms of sustainable cultivation.
Another example is intelligent irrigation systems capable of carefully calibrating the amount of water required. Intelligent sensors are distributed and precisely geolocated to detect and report soil quality.
The connector requirements for these indoor or outdoor applications have common characteristics.
Souriau industrial connectors such as the UTS and UTL ranges (designed and qualified to the UL1977 and IEC61984 standards) are ideal for these environments. The UTS and UTL products feature:
- Resistance to extreme temperature variations, from -40°C to +105°C, bad weather (IP68 and IP69K) and UV (no mechanical alteration confirmed after 5 years of exposure).
- Unaffected by regular fertilizer and pesticide spraying.
- Easy-action, robust locking systems.
- A service life of 250 cycles.
- Product design suited to either overmolded applications or standard installations.
Intelligent Agricultural Machinery
As intelligent machines for agriculture develop, technical requirements may also evolve.
For example, these could be vehicles with advanced assistance systems for weed detection, that require a high-speed data connection to transfer HD video to the control center.
For these types of application, it will be essential to be able to count not just on high speed data transfer, but also signal protection.
The metal connectors of the JBX series or Souriau's UT0 series provide signal shielding and guarantee 360° continuity.
Souriau also offers overmolded cables for all its connectors to afford even better protection of the system in terms of waterproofing and robustness.
For more information, visit https://usa.souriau.com/en-en.
