Garden Responsive Actuator and Sensor System

Purpose and goal

The project GRASS has demonstrated the benefits of using BLE Broadcast Mesh to be used in a garden. Measurements of radio capabilities and power consumption have been done, and a demonstration of a prototype system in a garden have been performed. BLE Mesh will (in another form) be standardised as an open specification, which makes it more likely to become the preferred solution for communication between products from a range of manufacturers.

Expected results and effects

Measurements show that the communication range is sufficient, given that the “line-of-sight” is ensured. The functionalities of the nodes need to be adapted to their battery power: nodes powered by batteries cannot be used for forwarding messages, but they can be used for transmitting messages originating from them, or for receiving messages. It was easy to set up a meshed garden network by following simple layout rules for placement of the BLE entities.

Planned approach and implementation

An initial investigation was performed in an early stage, and a system for measurements of BLE range was developed. A simple use case was chosen and a system was developed for test purposes, both for indoor and outdoor use. The system was then evaluated in a garden environment. This made it possible to acquire a deep understanding of the available state-of-the-art technologies within IoT, as well as a practical understanding of the suitability of BLE Mesh to be used in a range of areas.