A LoRaWan sensor network from Chinese firm Ursalink is being used for tea processing monitoring to guarantee product quality in Wuyishan.

The history of Chinese tea is a long and gradual story of refinement. Generations of growers and producers have perfected the Chinese way of manufacturing tea.

There are two to seven procedures involved in the processing of fresh tea leaves, such as withering, fixing, oxidation, rolling, drying and aging. Each of these procedures requires high accuracy and high stability in temperature and moisture controlling to avoid spoilage due to excess moisture and fluctuating temperatures.

To provide a consistent, high quality tea product, one of the tea manufacturers from Wuyishan contacted Ursalink to provide real-time environment monitoring.

The challenges included knowing the oxygen content of the air during the oxidation, temperature and humidity monitoring in the tea drying machine, monitoring the internal components of tea processing machinery to prevent equipment failure, and receiving alarms when environment conditions exceed the thresholds.

In this project, an RS485 type oxygen sensor was connected to a UC11-N1 LoRaWan sensor node via serial communications to detect the oxygen concentration of the ambient air. With IP67 rating and wide operating temperature, the EM300-TH temperature and humidity sensor can be installed in the high heat tumble dryers to monitor the internal temperature and humidity, which improves conditions for the tea-leaf drying process.

The EM500-PT100 temperature sensor is used for monitoring the temperature of tea processing machinery, to prevent equipment faults caused by long operating times. With multiple head type selections, The PT100 sensor can be attached to the internal components directly.

The Ursalink UG65 LoRaWan gateway receives all sensing data, and then forwards all data to the Ursalink Cloud. User can not only see visualised data on mobile phones but also get real-time alarms from anywhere.

The benefits are improved tea manufacturing efficiency, guarantees of the best tea product quality consistently, monitoring of the healthy status of machinery to prevent equipment faults, and real-time alarms on mobile phones.