Hey folks another development progress update for the project! Recently I decided that I between Vine and Vine-K I should be able to prototype and develop are the necessary/high priority hardware and software in the system meaning that I will be postponing the development of Ivy and focusing on the next big piece of hardware a family of boards call Madre. 

Agricoltura Madre is the both the RS485 mothership/master controller and wireless gateway for the entire ecosystem of connected hardware. Eventually Madre will be one design a single PCB design integrating everything as one unit but in the prototyping/design phase there will be a few versions in development.  So to cut to the chase these are the tentative versions as quick specs:

Beaglebone Green Gateway Based Version - Cape-A

- Seeedstudio Beaglebone Green Gateway
- 2x RS485 ports
- Sub 1GHZ wirless modem with SMA Antenna Connector
- 2.4GHZ wireless modem with SMA Antenna connector, supporting all 2.4G types
- 2x USB 2.0 ports
- USB serial monitor connection
- Ethernet

Raspberry Pi 4 based version:

- 2x RS485 ports
- Sub 1GHZ wirless modem with SMA Antenna Connector
- 2.4GHZ wireless model with SMA Antenna connector, supporting all 2.4G types
- Integrated WiFi (RPi4)
- USB ports (RPi4)
- Ethernet
- PoE or 24VAC Power 

Beaglebone SiP Based Version

- OSD335x Family System-in-package, running Debian Linux
- 4x RS485 ports
- Sub 1GHZ wirless modem with SMA Antenna Connector
- 2.4GHZ wireless model with SMA Antenna connector, supporting all 2.4G types
- WiFi modem with SMA antenna connector
- 2X USB 2.0 ports
- USB serial monitor connection
- Ethernet

The first two versions lean heavy on the prototype side of things, they are both designed as addon/daughter boards for existing single board computers that run linux and have a lot of support from their communities for just about everything you can imagine. The plan is to build both of these versions and evaluate which one has the best software support and is easiest to develop for. The third one is a full integrated version based on the beaglebone SiP aviailable from Octavo systems, this will end up being the final design depending on how things go with the first two, if RPi4 platform ends up being a better choice for this application the final version will then be based around the RPi4 compute module instead. 

As for software functionality, all of these versions will be about the same, they will poll for wireless sensors or RS485 modules sampling data to a simple onboard database that will consist of plain text JSON files, this data will then be uploaded to the cloud software designed to run on a standard linux server.  The madre boards will also be able to send commands to modules doing more than just sensing allowing for the user to update control schemes and monitor systems all through a user dashboard in the cloud. The madre is the gateway between an entire connected Agricoltura-IO deployment and the user. This is all rough and still in the concept phase to bare with me, lots more coming soon so stay tuned!!

Lets Rock!