Monitoring strawberries Building observability for indoor farming

Monitor strawberries from seed to harvest with real-time observability, built in collaboration with indoor farming experts, using IoT, Prometheus, and automated reporting.

Key takeaways
  • Building observability for indoor farming requires a domain-driven approach, where techniques are developed in collaboration with domain experts.
  • Domain events and alerting rules are used to monitor and regulate the environment in the containers.
  • IoT technologies are used to grow fruits and vegetables inside cities, allowing for fresh produce with no pesticides or transportation issues.
  • The importance of domain knowledge and understanding of physical engineering in building maintainable and scalable systems is highlighted.
  • Observability pipelines are built using Prometheus, time series, and automated reporting, and are integrated with Slack for real-time alerting.
  • The challenges of scaling indoor farming and achieving unit economics are discussed, as well as the need for a diverse team with technical skills in software development, DevOps, and domain expertise.
  • The use of VPD metrics for automated reporting and alerting is introduced, allowing for real-time monitoring of plant growth and transpiration.
  • The importance of communication between developers and domain experts is emphasized, with the need for a shared language and understanding of technical and business objectives.