Getting started with AgroSense

AgroSense is a farm management system. To manage a farm, a couple of things need to be setup. We need your help to do that.

Setup AgroSense

The following steps need to be taken in order to correctly setup a farm:

  1. Create a farm
  2. Create or import fields
  3. Create production units
  4. - to come: Setup stock

Create a farm

To start with AgroSense choose 'create new Farm' from the startpage. If you already closed the startscreen go to the menu, and choose 'create new Farm'. A wizard will start, asking several (administrative) questions about the farm. Provide AgroSense the necessary details, and continue. The next (and last) step shows a summary to detect and correct mistakes.

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Create or import fields

The second step in setting up a farm is setting up fields. A farm without fields can't be much good. Fields can be either imported (when you have a shapefile containing fields), or created.

Import fields

To import fields it's necessary to have a shapefile with fields. Otherwise AgroSense doesn't know what to import. The correct steps that need to be taken are:

  1. Choose File -> import from the menu
  2. Limit the displayed files to shapefiles (by choosing Esri shape file in the pulldown)
  3. Navigate to the correct folder on your harddisk or usb-drive
  4. Select the correct shapefile
  5. Hit open
  6. Drag the imported shapefile (found under Import -> Shapes) to the fields-node

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Create fields

To create a field just right-click the fields-node in the explorer, and choose 'new field'. Enter the requested details, and voila. The created field only contains administrative data. If you want to draw the field (on the map), just drag the newly created field to the map, and start drawing dots (that represent the corners of the field). Once you're done just hit the save-button (on the right side of the screen).

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Create production units

Create a production unit

A production unit links a certain crop to a certain field, for a certain period of time. To create a production unit, just right-click the production units-node, and select 'new production unit'. A wizard opens, in which some information needs to be entered. Once you've finished this administrative step your production unit is ready for usage.

Link fields to a production unit

The created production unit doesn't have any coordinates, so it's not clear where it is, or how many acres it is. To provide AgroSense with these details you need to add a field to the production unit. This can be done by dragging it (in the explorer) from Fields to the production unit. An other way will be (in time) to right-click a field (in the explorer or on the map) and select 'add to production unit'. By dragging a field to a production unit you have created a Cropfield. This cropfield has an area and a certain crop, for a given period of time.

Split a cropfield

To split a cropfield (because you want to use only one half of a field for a certain purpose), drag the cropfield to the map. Now right-click the layer, and choose 'split cropfield'. The map goes into edit-mode, in which you can draw a line by selecting points. If the line completely crosses the cropfield, and divides it correctly the save-button becomes active. After saving the two newly created cropfields appear in the explorer. Now it's possible to drag one of them to another production unit. The result is that two different crops can be grown on one field.

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Explore

The above text describes the basic functions of AgroSense. The next step is to explore how these functions can suit and support your personal way of working. More detailed information about every function can be found in the corresponding chapters on the left.