Technology
Integrated LoRa Sensor Monitoring & Analytics System
Turning raw LoRa telemetry from tree-mounted sensors into live dashboards that answer watering and growth questions - built in one week.
1 week · From nothing to a working system
The challenge
Ottronic had fitted trees in Austria with two kinds of LoRa sensor to monitor tree health: a strain sensor measuring growth and contraction of the trunk, and a tensiometer measuring soil moisture. The nodes also reported ambient temperature and their own battery voltage.
The data was flowing, but it wasn't actionable. The LoRa packet carried no field identifying which sensor type a reading came from, so humidity and expansion measurements arrived interleaved in the same stream. Nothing was being retained for historical analysis, and the field team had no way to ask the data "which tree needs watering?" or "is this trunk growing, or shrinking from water stress?"
The approach
This work was carried out during a TUM 1000+ Project Week: an interdisciplinary team of four master's students spent a week on site with Ottronic in Fohnsdorf, Austria. We built the chain from sensor to dashboard: LoRa gateway → Node-RED → InfluxDB → Grafana.
- Deriving sensor type from the data. The packet didn't declare its type. We parsed the raw string (@;R69;S12;131;22960;173;24;!) and wrote a numerical rule on the fourth field: above 250 the reading is trunk expansion, at or below 250 it is soil humidity. Every packet is then routed to the right measurement with the right column names.
- Storage. Readings are kept as time series in InfluxDB 2.0, making historical analysis possible for the first time.
- The map. A Geomap dashboard in Grafana shows every node at its location, with soil icons for humidity sensors and tree icons for expansion sensors. Clicking a marker reveals the latest values and a link through to that sensor's detail dashboard.
- Eight automated insights. Alongside the raw graphs we added indicators that turn data straight into a maintenance decision: a four-level watering recommendation, drought risk, temperature stress (frost and heat alerts), drying rate over a rolling two-hour window, overwatering risk, battery status, a 100-point tree health score, and trunk diameter change rate - from "shrinking fast" to "growing fast".
- Adjustable by design. Every threshold can be changed from the dashboard, so different tree species or climates need no code changes.
By the end of the week the team handed over the working system plus a step-by-step guide so Ottronic can add and remove sensors themselves.
The outcome
Results that moved the needle.
- 1 week
-
From nothing to a working system
On site during a TUM 1000+ Project Week, with a team of four
- 8
-
Automated maintenance insights
From watering recommendations to battery status and trunk growth
- 2
-
Sensor types separated from one stream
The packet carried no type field; a numerical rule resolved it
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