Convergencia Research, Consultoría especializada en Latinoamérica y Caribe
Wednesday, May 06, 2020

Public-private initiative between a high-tech company and Misiones

They will manufacture infrared thermometers with IoT technology suitable for Big Data, essential for the pandemic

The Argentine Factory of Nanosenors Iot (FanIoT) was born on December 22 as a partnership between the Ministry of Culture, Education, Science and Technology of Misiones, Sapem Marandú Comunicaciones and agtech Smartcultiva. Three months later, the company announced that it had successfully tested infrared thermometers to measure body temperature remotely. It is an essential tool for crowd control against the coronavirus pandemic.

So FanIot will use its resources to manufacture the devices, at a cost of US $ 95 each. All thermometers of this type in the country are imported.

Unlike industrial thermometers, which were first used at airports around the world to test passengers, FanIot's are accurate to +/- 0.5 degrees and transmit data online to create heat maps and mapping predictive.

The speed of development is explained by the fact that Smartcultiva already had products with an infrared thermometer for measuring systems in greenhouses. It is a development from industrial thermometers, which control motors or casting temperatures, and have a margin of error of +/- 2 ° C.

"We added a laser point and a distance meter to take the temperature in a given space," Martín Bueno, CEO of Smartcultiva, told Convergence. The sensors have a built-in OLED panel where the data can be viewed. In addition, the company developed a special algorithm. Since it works with IoT technology, the device transmits the data it registers to the cloud. In this way, a heat map can be generated by zones and, through AI, predictive templates can be developed on how the contagion will behave. The thermometer is ideal to be used by educational institutions, public bodies, companies and any location with a large number of people.

In 1992, when the Internet came to Argentina, Bueno inaugurated one of the first Argentine ISPs: Los Pinos, which had 30,000 clients and sold it in 1998 to Sky Television.

Smartcultiva was born in 2016 with an investment of US $ 400,000 from its founders, Bueno and Eileen Ebene (28), as a company specialized in IoT products for AgTech.

They started by working on creating nanosensors that measure temperature and humidity, especially for hydroponic crops. They are the size of a finger, unlike the box-size sensors previously available. Today the company has a portfolio of 37 sensors that measure the level of Ph and electroconductivity in water. Others analyze the ozone layer. The latest models are capable of transmitting data over cellular networks and Lora, with up to 60 km. scope.

Smartcultiva was established in the United States. At the time, they presented the project to the secretary of Entrepreneurs and SMEs of the previous government, Mariano Mayer, to install a factory in the country. Smartcultiva was ranked as the fifth agricultural technology company in the world. "They weren't interested," Bueno said. Today it has a second base of operations in Dubai, a factory in La Boca and 18 representatives in the world. It employs 50 people, mostly electronic engineers and embedded software specialists.

THE NASA. Two years ago, the company was selected by NASA to provide sensors that will measure the characteristics of plants in the Mars 2033 project. The vegetables will be in a closed capsule. A replica of the base is operating at the University of North Dakota.

Before turning fully to thermometers, Smarcultiva had developed in the FanIoT consortium some plates for learning robotics. They are similar to those of the Arduino system, used in all Argentine schools and imported from China, but with several improvements.

On the one hand, it is an open system of knowledge. Any teacher or student can propose an improvement that the consortium will evaluate to implement. Being an IoT device, any user can share their experiments and learnings. In addition, it is easily prototyped and allows interconnecting any sensor. The board can be stacked. And its cost is cheaper than imported ones.

The company has already received a dozen orders from countries in America and Europe interested in acquiring the plate.

The plan was to have 1,000 units of a Beta version manufactured by next June. Most would be distributed in Misiones institutions and 5% in schools in other provinces. Later the definitive model would be made.

Now the priority is thermometers. At press time, FanIoT was in talks with the brand new National Agency for the Promotion of Research, Technological Development and Innovation to determine the details of manufacturing and commissioning.

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