InventionShare, a company that help inventors get their latest inventions launched & marketed, announced the development of the Circuit Seed family of inventions. With rapid growth in the precision ag market, the potential impact of accurate sensor technology continues to grow.

When all production factors are known, typically monitored through the use of sensors; nutrients in the soil, humidity, solar radiation, density of weeds then chemical products such as fertilizers, herbicides and other products can be reduced considerably. These activities fall inside the emerging area known as Precision Agriculture. The total precision agriculture market size is expected to grow at a CAGR of 12.2% from 2014 to 2020 and reach $4.55 billion by 2020.

Circuit Seed building block designs for processing analog signals also reduce the time and cost to design, test, manufacture and support low power devices. This is a big breakthrough for Precision Agriculture

Mr. Waite said, “Circuit Seed will allow researchers to develop simpler mixed integrated circuits with fewer limitations, smaller size, better performance, higher stability, and greater dynamic range. Circuit Seed building block designs for processing analog signals also reduce the time and cost to design, test, manufacture and support low power devices. This is a big breakthrough for Precision Agriculture.

The big advantage for the Precision Agriculture market is that Circuit Seed circuits for processing analog signals are simpler to work with and do not require matched pairs or current mirrors, and will function on 40nm or smaller integrated circuits. The overall circuits are insensitive to parametric changes, making precision designs without precision parts a reality. These circuits also run at logic speed and are self-biasing. They generally work over a large frequency range with high sensitivity and accuracy. Each benefit of the circuit design is not a trade off against other benefits but additive, in that you get all of the benefits, all of the time. Circuit Seed circuits will operate down to less than 0.1V using a 100% digital process. Using Circuit Seed designs can also dramatically reduce the work required by analog chip designers in this space.

Mr. Waite said, “We are able to reduce the size of a sensor, its power requirements, provide much higher measurement accuracy and enable long range data communications and this can be achieved at a market acceptable cost that is much lower than the current state of the art offerings. While there is adoption in this market, for example, most new tractors and implements are sold with factory-installed global navigation satellite system (GNSS) receivers and a variety of sensors, the cost of the current state of the art analog and digital sensors is prohibitive. When you throw this functionality on multimillion dollar farm equipment the cost is more easily supported, but if you want to place a large number of localized sensors in and around crops you almost need the cost to be akin to disposables.”