Ericsson creates corking IoT app for German winemakers

A team of experts from Ericsson, MyOmega System Technologies, Intel and Telenor Connexion has built possibly the world’s first Internet of Things service for winemakers.

The system’s sensors collect data on all the variables that affect a vintage, such as the humidity and temperature of the air and soil, and the intensity of sunlight, and feeds them via an Intel-based gateway to an (IT) cloud service. Monitoring of the vineyard environment and predictive analysis of the data then allows wine makers to take pre-emptive action to prevent harmful conditions, such as frost damage, from affecting the crop. The system ultimately helps raise the quality of the harvest, cuts costs and reduces the environmental impact.

The offering, TracoVino services and solutions, will be offered by MyOmega to winemakers. Four winemakers in the Mosel Valley, Germany are currently participating in a field trial.

This service is based on Ericsson’s Device Connection Platform (DCP) integrated with its Authentication Federation Gateway. It is built on the 3GPP standard Generic Bootstrapping Architecture for LTE and pioneers a new technique for end-to-end security and authentication by transferring sensor data to the cloud for processing and analysis.

Ericsson DCP is a cloud-based IoT platform that handles connectivity management, subscription management and OSS/BSS, enabling automation of business processes between operators and enterprises.

Intel will supply processors and LTE modems for the IoT gateways and MyOmega System Technologies, headquartered in Nuremberg, Germany, will provide sensor and gateway hardware and software.

“We see great potential for scaling the service to winemakers globally and to additional industrial applications in the networked society, such as real estate management,” said Anders Olin, VP of the Ericsson’s Business Unit Cloud & IP. The IoT and quality tools for the winemakers are reducing their risks and improving the yield, said Olin.

The size of the wine industry export globally is €26 billion according to research by the International organization of Vine and Wine (OIV). Many French purists, however, insist that interfering with environmental conditions affects the integrity of the vintage.