This article assumes all your sensors are within range of your central station and are able to successfully communicate their readings and update in the web app. Thus, this article focuses on how to properly place your Sigrow sensors in your environment.

Proper placement of your sensors is important for several reasons:

1. To avoid damage to the sensor
2. To help ensure that what you measure is meaningful and what you intend.

Table of contents:

• Plant Microclimates
• Placement
• Right Placement ✅
• Wrong Placement ❌
• Stand Examples
• Hanging
• Stake, tripod, pole
• Metal Holder
• Customizable Chair
• Placing the Soil Probe
• Soil probe placement in substrate

Plant Microclimates

What do we mean with this?

We like to focus on plant microclimates and getting you as close to your plants as possible.  Placing sensors high above your plants is also possible however, these measurements will reflect the environment at the top of your facility and may not reflect the reality of your plants below. We believe greenhouses to have spatio-temporal variability, and thus by placing sensors at plant level, detecting the underlying cause of why certain corners of your facility perform better/ worse than others becomes possible.

Placement

Product Models: Air+, AirPro+, SoilPro+, DryAir+, SiPixel+

As a general rule, we recommend all sensors should be placed upright in a vertical position, slightly elevated, and fixed to something.

The reason for this:

• We have found that when sensors are free to move around, damage is more likely to occur.
• We recommend to fix sensors to a stand to avoid the sensor tipping over.
• We also recommend to fix the sensor slightly elevated to allow the sensor to properly ventilate from the bottom and to prevent water from entering if sitting directly on a surface.

Right Placement ✅

Reason: Base of sensor case is elevated off surface to avoid water entering from the bottom through the ventilation holes. The base of the Sigrow chair is hollow to allow proper ventilation

Wrong Placement ❌

Reason: Sensor placed directly on surface. Easily knocked over and cannot properly ventilate through the bottom. Evidence of soil around bottom of case. Likely leads to water damage.

Stand Examples

The following images are examples of successful canopy level placements where the bottom of the sensor is left obstruction-free for air temperature and humidity readings. The images also serve as inspiration for different options available to you depending on your facility and crop type.

Hanging

Suitable for high-wire crops such as tomatoes and cucumbers

Stake, tripod, pole

Metal Holder

Offered by Sigrow

Customizable length

Customizable Chair

Offered by Sigrow

This chair is hollow in the center to allow proper ventilation for air humidity and temperature readings

Placing the Soil Probe

Product Models: SoilPro+, SoilMini

The Soil probe of the SoilPro, SoilPro+, and SoilMini should be placed in such a way that optimal contact with the substrate is realized. Keeping this in mind, once inserting the soil probe into the substrate, we recommend to press the substrate firmly as well as pour some water around the base to eliminate possible air pockets. If space is created around the pins from removing and reinserting the soil probe several times, the readings can be negatively influenced.

We do not recommend placing the soil probes directly next to each other. If the pins cross each other within the substrate, they may negatively influence each others measurements.

Soil probe placement in substrate

We recommend inserting the soil probe in the lower part of the substrate for relevant soil humidity and pore EC readings. However we also see that growers sometimes like to insert several soil probes vertically stacked in a pot to track different soil layers. When doing this, we recommend to space the soil probes at least 10cm apart and to make sure the pins from neighboring probes are parallel to each other.