Earth’s population continues to grow. Some reports suggest upwards of 10 billion people will inhabit the planet by 2050, requiring more than double today’s current food production capacity. How will everybody be fed? Is there more land? Is there more fresh water? These are questions facing the agricultural community.
Many new approaches to farming are emerging. Whether called “smart farming”, “precision agriculture” or “climate-smart agriculture”, applying new sensing technology with cloud connectivity allow farmers to maximize crop yields with finite resources.
Indoor farming is another area ripe for advancement. Greenhouses have been around for centuries, but LED lighting and precise climate control are improving yields. Vertical farming is gaining traction. What other technologies are emerging?
GrowFlux Intelligent Horticulture Lighting
Samtec customer GrowFlux is a horticultural technology company offering connected intelligent horticulture lighting and sensors for large-scale growers, including indoor farms and greenhouses. GrowFlux products help growers implement tunable LED lighting and quality control protocols, allowing its customers to boost yields, improve quality and consistency, and save energy.
GrowFlux’s latest solution – FluxScale™ – offers a next gen-solution in horticulture lighting. FluxScale is a connected, fully tune-able broad spectrum horticultural lighting product designed for greenhouses and high-intensity top lighting applications. Featuring the company’s patent-pending PrecisionPAR™ technology, FluxScale is the only horticultural lighting solution on the market capable of delivering consistent light levels for up to 10 years.
FluxScale is also the industry’s first LED fixture capable of delivering both flowering and vegetative light spectrums at full power in one fixture, giving growers far more flexibility in their operations compared to conventional LED grow lights. In order to implement these unique features, the company placed a powerful processor very close to the 600W LED array to perform various measurements and control tasks.
GrowFlux Leverages Samtec High-Reliability Connectors
For its intelligent horticulture lighting, GrowFlux needed a high-reliability connector to mate their engine control module, a small PCB hosting an ARM Cortex M3 processor, to their high-power LED PCBs. This required a low-profile board-to-board connector set suited for rugged environments. The solution would have to withstand vibration and extended temperature ranges for upwards of ten years.
GrowFlux also desired no additional fasteners, tactile feedback ensuring positive locking during installation, ease of assembly, and a good out-of-box experience.
Samtec’s SFML series .050″ Tiger Eye™ High-Reliability Locking Socket Strip and mating TFML series .050″ Tiger Eye™ High-Reliability Locking Terminal Strip fit the bill. Both SFML/TFLM series are a part of Samtec’s Extended Life Products™ (E.L.P.™) and utilize the high-reliability Tiger Eye™ contact systems.
Key SFML series features include:
- Available in standard or low insertion contacts
- Available in surface mount and through-hole
- Low-cost Tiger Eye™ Lite contacts available
- Rugged options available
- Vertical row configuration
Key TFML series features include:
- Multiple stack heights
- Rugged friction lock feature
- Rugged options available
- Shrouded body for blind mating
- Vertical and horizontal row configurations
For more information, please download the Micro Rugged Application Design Guide or select a ruggedized mated connector set at www.samtec.com/solutionator.
