From laboratory testing to 18 partner ponds
The Aquanotes team moved research sensors into far harsher field conditions — and found the biggest problem was not the sensor but operator habits.
A sensor that behaves perfectly on a lab bench faces very different conditions once installed in a pond: salt water, high humidity, direct sun, and power supply that isn't always stable. The team's first challenge wasn't measurement accuracy — it was hardware durability.
After a series of housing and power-supply adjustments, a second problem emerged that no technical data could show: operator habits. An alert is only useful if it's read and acted on at the right time, so the team changed how notifications were delivered and simplified the display so it could be read at a glance.
This lesson carried into the pre-commercialization stage: every new feature is tested not just for sensor accuracy, but for whether farmers actually act on the alerts they receive.