This article provides a step-by-step guide on how to initiate a dry with ZONE and explains the fundamental concepts that the dashboard is based on. Before accessing the dashboard, you will need to set up gateways.
Navigate to the ZONE dashboard and use your username and temporary password to login to your account which you received from Growvera.
Once you login with your temporary password, you will be prompted to enter a new password and your phone number. This number is for support purposes only. If you have trouble logging in, do not hesitate to reach out via the customer portal.
Once you have set your password, you will be navigated to the ZONE dashboard home screen, which will initially be empty.
Figure 2. The blank ZONE dashboard.
Until we get some dries going, the home screen will stay blank. Time to set up some gateways!
Growvera Utilizes LoRaWAN gateways to send sensor data to the ZONE dashboard.
If your gateway looks like the one below, click here.
Or reach out to support for help with legacy gateways.
RAK Outdoor Gateways have 5 core components.
Figure 6. RAK Outdoor Gateway Anatomy. Note that the antennas will not come connected
RAK Outdoor Gateways are IP65 rated and transport ZONE sensor data to the dashboard. Gateways require a few things for proper functionality.
Connect the longer antenna labeled LoRa to the F-Type connector labeled LoRa on the top left side of the gateway. Connect the short antenna labeled Cellular to the F-Type connector labeled LTE-MAIN on the top right side of the gateway.
Screw in the F-Type sealing caps over the three other F-Type antenna connectors (labeled Wifi, GPS, and LTE-DIV/LoRa2) to seal these connectors.
The RAK outdoor gateway takes PoE directly. If your network switch supports PoE, you can proceed to waterproofing the PoE connection. If your network switch does not support PoE, use the PoE Injector that came in your gateway kit. Set up the PoE Injector by
❗PoE Injector is NOT Waterproof ❗
The PoE injector that comes in the gateway kit is NOT WATERPROOF. If using the injector, ensure that it is not exposed to water or fog.
To waterproof the gateway PoE connection point, do the following:
Gateway Boot Sequence ℹ️
When you first power on a gateway, it will take ~1.5 minutes to boot. If all goes well, the PWR, ETH, and LoRa LED indicators will turn green. If the ETH indicator does not show green, check your network connection and ensure the ethernet cable is connected properly.
Once you have powered and connected the gateway, proceed to positioning the gateway.
It is crucial to position the gateways within the drying room you wish to monitor, ensuring they are within range of the ZONE sensors. If you are monitoring multiple rooms, it is possible to use a single gateway as long as the rooms are relatively close together. Without gateways within range of the ZONE sensors, the data will not be transmitted to the ZONE dashboard.
Multiple Gateways ℹ️
For large deployments with multiple gateways, we recommend placing a gateway within each dry room you'd like to monitor.
Once you have set up your gateways and the indicators are solid green, navigate back to the ZONE dashboard. In ZONE dashboard, click on the Settings tab and scroll all the way down to the Gateways section. If everything went well during setup, you will see all of your gateways represented by tiles with a little green status indicator representing that the gateways are connected to the network and ready to go.
Figure 11. An example gateway section of the ZONE Dashboard Settings tab, showing one gateway (ID: 7276ff0044071255) as online and the other gateway (ID: 7276ff004407125b) as offline.
The hard work is done, time to set up your dashboard!
ZONE considers a space to be any location in which plants are being dried. This could be a shipping container, a laminar flow drying room, a box, a dirt lot... or anything else. Name it whatever you like! We suggest that the space be tied, in your mind, to a physical location that you can identify in case we send you an alert.
Alerting Ranges ℹ️
When configuring your acceptable ranges for your spaces, bear in mind that the sensors are reporting temperature and humidity from directly next to the drying plants. This can be a dynamic climate that a temperature and humidity sensor placed nearby but not within the plants often does not do a good job capturing.
ZONE considers a strain to be any group of plants that are dried together for which a target moisture is trying to be achieved. We suggest you assign ZONE dries for every strain in a given space. If you do not want to do this, please see our knowledge base for a guide.
Flower Lot Moisture Targets ℹ️
You can get granular with strains and using them to target different moistures per flower lot!
ZONE considers a dry to be a strain in a space, dried for a certain amount of time. In this section, you will use the space and strain you just configured to start a new dry.
Once you have created the dry, you can always go back and update prior to starting the dry 👍
Unwanted T/H Alerts ℹ️
Sometimes the acceptable temperature and humidity ranges you end up setting for a dry are too tight. You can update these ranges while the dry is ongoing to ensure you receive alerts only when the room has adverse conditions.
Grab your sensors and push the button, this will activate the plant connection test.
Plant Connection Test:
🔴 blinks : sensor is not connected to a plant.
🟢 blinks : sensor has a great connection to a plant.
🟡 blinks : sensor has a good connection to a plant.
Attach your sensor that is blinking red 🔴 to the central stem as close to the head cola as you can. If you have made proper connection with the plant, the sensor will blink green 🟢.
As soon as the sensor is blinking green, you can move on to the next sensor!
Once you have connected all your sensors to the plants, go back to your dashboard to start your dry.
After you start the dry, the first data points will be visible within 15 minutes. For an example of the type trends you might see, please see the ZONE in action case studies.
If the average temperature or humidity falls outside of the range you configured, ZONE will send you an alert. Similarly, once the target moisture you set has been achieved, ZONE will notify you. For more information on the types of alerts and the triggering logic, please see the Alerts article.
Ending a Dry ℹ️
Ending a dry is an irreversible process, once you have ended a dry, it cannot be restarted.
Congratulations, you now have all the knowledge to be able to create and start and end dries in ZONE! This is the fundamental mechanism through which you will revolution your drying operations. Check out the ZONE Dashboard Overview for a deeper dive into the ZONE dashboard functionality.
Happy drying 🍃