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Sensors and Sensor Integrations in Trym

Support Admin
Updated
Integrate sensors to track conditions across locations and plants with Trym's sensor integrations

Why are Sensors Important

Where can I Purchase Sensors

How to Integrate your Sensors

Managing Zones and Sensors

Best Practices/Troubleshooting Sensor Integrations

Why are Sensors Important

Trym's Precision Agriculture model uses sensors to capture the environmental conditions of your grow spaces as well as the root zones of your plants. The data provided through our sensor and sensor integrations paints the picture to the drivers behind your plants health, the resulting yields, and ultimately your success.

Where can I purchase sensors

You can acquire sensors exclusively through our partnership with Aranet at our Sensor Store via this link here. We offer wireless substrate, PAR, and Room Condition sensors including the Basestation which is the hub for the wireless sensors.

How to Integrate your Sensors

How to Integrate your Aranet Sensors with Trym

1) Connect your Base Station to the Internet via Wifi or Ethernet Cable

2) Pair your Sensors to the Base Station

3) Connect to Aranet Cloud

You can review or onboarding guide or book a meeting with our success team to go over these steps in more detail.

If you need to inquire about an already established IP address to log into your Aranet Basestation UI please email us at support@trym.io or contact support directly via Trym Explore or the Trym Mobile app.

How to Integrate TrolMaster or Growlink Data into Trym

  1. Log in to explore.trym.io, head into the Admin menu

  2. Click on the Sensor Integrations tab, in the top right corner, click on + Add integration

  3. Select your sensor manufacturer from the list, depending on the manufacturer you may need to either validate your log in username and password, or enter an API key. Follow the on-screen instructions here.

  4. Once the integration is validated, you'll see a list of controllers on the screen. Go ahead and name your controllers if they are not already named, and assign each one to one room, or multiple rooms if the controller covers many locations. Save your work when you're done.

  5. That's it! The final step is to configure zone and assign sensors to each zone

Managing Zones and Sensors

Considerations on how to name zones

There are a variety of strategies when it comes to creating zones your rooms. It is also important to understand that a single sensor can be shared across many zones. Here are some examples to help you.

  • By bench / table

    • Good

      • Rooms with multiple sensors

      • Rooms with multiple valves feeding the different benches

      • More granular plant location information

    • Bad

      • More granular plant information comes with clicks when moving plants or creating plant batches. You'll need to specify which zone plants move to.

    • This is a solid strategy if you have many sensors spanning many zones. For example, in Flower Room 1 I have 10 root zone sensors across 5 benches, and one room environmental sensor in the middle of the room. I may want to have 5 zones named "Bench 1", "Bench 2", etc..Each zone/bench would then have its 2 root zone sensors assigned and the environmental sensor would be added to each of the 5 zones. That way I can look at each zone and get a picture of its individual root zone environment and the room's environment.

  • Larger Zones

    • Good

      • Rooms with a single sensor

      • Less to set up up-front

      • Less to manage when creating and moving plants around the system

    • This is a solid strategy if you are working with room sensors only, no root zone sensors, and you don't particularly care for more granular plant locations. For example, if I have a single TrolMaster Hydro-x controller in a room and sensors to monitor the RH, CO2, and Temperature, then I'll name my zone the same as my room name and assign the sensors from the Hydro-X pro to that zone.

Adding Zones

  1. Head to the Facilities menu

  2. Click on the ellipse menu (...) next to the room you'd like to add a zone, or zones, to and click Zones

  3. Add as many zones as you'd like in the chosen room

  4. Now you're ready to assign sensors to each zone. Click on the ⌵ icon all the way to the right hand side of the zone

  5. Click + Add Sensor, choose your device(s), then select the sensors for the particular zone you're editing

  6. Rinse and repeat across each zone, and each room until every room has at least one zone and, if present, each zone has sensors assigned

Editing and Deleting Zones

  1. Head to the Facilities menu

  2. Click on the ellipse menu (...) next to the room you'd like to edit a zone, or zones, from and click Zones

  3. Click the ellipse menu (...) next to the zone you'd like to edit or delete and choose the relevant action. Rooms can be renamed or deleted at will. This will not impact historical information. i.e. In historical reports, zones will be named what they were at the time the data was captured, not what they are presently named.

  4. Rinse and repeat steps 2 and 3 until you're done editing zones

Editing and Deleting Sensors

Note: If you have added sensors follow the steps in this article to refresh your sensors, then come back here to edit the zone with the new sensor information.

  1. Head to the Facilities menu

  2. Click on the ellipse menu (...) next to the room you'd like to edit a sensor, or sensors, from and click Zones

  3. Click on the ⌵ icon all the way to the right hand side of the zone that contains the sensor in question

  4. Use the trash can icon next to sensors you want to delete, or use the + Add Sensor button to add new sensors

  5. Rinse and repeat

Best Practices/Troubleshooting Sensor Integrations

Why has my sensor integration stopped reporting environmental conditions?

If there was an outage to the sensor or basestation/hub you can try refreshing your sensors If that does not bring environmental conditions back in Trym Explore within 3-5 minutes please try power cycling your Aranet Basestation.

How to Refresh Sensors

  1. Click on the Admin menu

  2. Head to Sensor Integrations

  3. Click Edit under your integration type

  4. To refresh devices, click the refresh ⟳ button

  5. Save and done!

How to power cycle my Aranet Basestation

You'll have to use the on/off switch on the bottom left of the basestation and leave it off for at least 30 seconds and then turn it back on to cycle the power.

I added a new controller to my TrolMaster or Growlink UI and I don't see it listed in the list of devices in Trym.

You can you can try refresh your sensor at the integration point to have Trym bring in any newly added controllers so you can start adding sensors to zones.

How to Update Your Sensors API Key

  1. Click on the Admin menu

  2. Head to Sensor Integrations

  3. Click Edit under your integration type

  4. To update your API key click the gear icon ⚙ in the top right to paste your new key

  5. Save and done!

How can I change my Aranet Sensors to pair with a different base station?

If you are reassigning Aranet Sensors to another basestation besaue you are reconfiguring your rooms please review these steps.

Changing Aranet Sensors to pair with a Different Base Station

  • Go to Sensor --> Setting and Delete the old sensor from its current Base Station

  • Take out the battery from the sensor or cycle power (on<>off)

  • Go to the new Base Station in the Aranet Cloud

  • Repair Sensor to new Base Station

Sensor Renaming and Moving Recommendation

If you expect to move sensors around frequently, naming the sensor something non-location specific will help you assign them to zones easier and not get confused or require renaming each time in the base station.

Come up with a naming convention like A1, B6, C2, or Red 1, Green 5 etc, that way you can just look at the sensor and say, 'oh, I have sensor K5 and it goes in room 4 zone front'. Rather than 'oh I have sensor Flower rm 3 and it's going into Flower rm 2 so I need to rename it in Aranet'. You'd only have to rename the zone to match the sensor in Trym which is only one system.

Any kind of simple identifying convention is helpful. One idea is to buy different colors of electrical tape and mark 1, 2 or 3 stripes. You could then have red 1, red 2, red 3 easily identifiable across a room. The goal is to keep the sensors standardized, and just rename the zones if needed. You can always include the sensor ID like A4 in the zone name too.

In summary, try to keep sensor names basic, easy to identify (physically and in name), and location agnostic. This will make it easier to update them in zones, or add to the zone name for a quick cross-reference.

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