Jakarta, November 11th , 2020. One of the current Internet of Things (IoT) based solutions, PT XL Axiata Tbk (XL Axiata), continues to develop and serves industry players in agriculture, including urban farming. The precision farming solution is named "XL Smart Hydroponics." As the name implies, this solution is built to improve quality and agricultural productivity using hydroponic techniques. The use of solutions based on IoT has proven to be successful in increasing farmer productivity to more than double. The development of innovative IoT-based services is part of the digital transformation that XL Axiata is carrying out.
Chief Enterprise & XL Axiata's SME Officer, Feby Sallyanto, said, "Farming with using hydroponic techniques must pay attention to several important things, such as between other monitoring and regular adjustment of nutrient doses, water, and air temperatures, as well as the acidity (pH) of the water to be used. These things very affect the plant growth process. However, measurements are often lacking accurate and not done routinely, resulting extreme malnutrition and poor plant growth. XL Smart Hydroponics is designed to be a solution to these problems."
Feby explained that XL Smart Hydroponics is an all-in-one system or an integrated system, both in sensor, actuator, connectivity, platform, and application performance. Equipped with a touch screen display supported by an easy-to-use Graphical User Interface (GUI) farmers can monitor real-time and automatically optimize the parameters that affect crop conditions. This technology will democratize technology and help urban farmers to have an excellent hydroponic system to achieve food self-sufficiency.
XL Smart Hydroponics has been implemented this year by the Baitul Maal Hidayatullah (BMH) Hydroponic Nutrition Garden in Depok, West Java. This solution has proven to be able to increase productivity on average more than twofold. Previously, without using this tool, the measurement of nutrients for plants was done manually, so that there is a tendency for inaccurate measurements and delays in adding nutrients. This results in inconsistent plant growth and affects productivity.
The main functions of XL Smart Hydroponics are monitoring air and water conditions and controlling water nutrition automatically. The air condition around the plants will be monitored to maintain ideal conditions for the plants. The water tank containing nutrients is installed with several sensors that will measure various related parameters, then this data will be processed in the system and the pump as an actuator that will automatically inject nutrients according to plant needs. The development of machine learning, sensors, and other actuators can add advantages and sharpen analysis and predictions.
To make it easier for business actors, including MSMEs, to take advantage of IoT solutions to increase productivity, XL Axiata has an IoT-based solution development laboratory called "X-Camp." In this place, the client and users' needs will be poured into an IoT-based device that can be operated as expected. Every IoT device is built on XL Axiata's "flexIoT" platform. This platform is a unified full-stack platform that can be integrated well with other systems and provide integrity in services.
XL Axiata strengthens its commitment to always support national development through the telematics sector, including encouraging the use of innovative services, including IoT, to advance the business world, including among MSMEs. Stepping on its 24th year working as a telecommunication and data operator in Indonesia, XL Axiata is fully aware of the telematics field's urgency, which it is engaged in as one of the main pillars of accelerating national development. Therefore, the management of XL Axiata will continue to align business interests with support for the government's vision of action.