🌱 Real-World Use Case of W55RP20-EVB-PICO in Smart Agriculture

Hello Community!

Today, I’d like to share an exciting case presented at the 2025 Annual Conference of the Agricultural Informatics Society (Kyoto University, May 25, 2025).
In this project, the W55RP20-EVB-PICO board by WIZnet played a key role in building a low-cost, remote irrigation monitoring system

📌 The Problem: Irrigation Takes Too Much Time

In farming, watering crops may sound simple, but it’s actually very labor-intensive.

With the aging population and labor shortage in agriculture, automation is in high demand.

However, expensive irrigation systems are difficult to install in existing greenhouses.

Farmers often need to manually open and close multiple valves, which can take up to 2 hours every day.

This created a strong need for an affordable, DIY-installable automatic irrigation system.

⚙️ The Solution by B&B Lab.

The research team at B&B Lab. developed a system that could be installed and maintained at low cost:

Valve Control Unit : ESP32-based controller managing up to 16 valves

Sensor Monitoring : Pressure and current sensors to check water flow and pump conditions

Remote Access : Data sent via LTE router and MQTT for monitoring through the internet

And at the heart of the system, acting as a data and control gateway, was the W55RP20-EVB-PICO.

🌐 Why W55RP20-EVB-PICO?

The team chose W55RP20-EVB-PICO as a gateway device for several reasons:

Cost-effective → W55RP20 integrates RP2040 + W5500 + Flash into a single SiP (System-in-Package), reducing component cost and PCB assembly effort.

Stable Ethernet Connectivity → Unlike wireless connections (which can be unstable in farming environments), Ethernet ensures reliable data transfer.

Compact and Simple → The small form factor makes it easy to install directly into agricultural equipment.

🎥 Live Demo in the Field

The presentation also showcased a demo of W55RP20-EVB-PICO controlling irrigation valves and an inverter remotely:

Farmers could check valve status (ON/OFF) from a web dashboard on their smartphone or PC.

Pressure and current sensors helped detect issues early and send alerts.

The system successfully implemented automatic irrigation + remote monitoring in real greenhouses.

🚀 Future Outlook

Lower Communication Costs : Instead of sending all data to the cloud, only essential information is transmitted.

Scalability for More Farmers : With its low price and DIY installation, even small-scale farmers can adopt it.

Open Collaboration : The team has published UECS protocol porting code on GitHub, allowing further improvement and new IoT applications.

In addition, the team will present “Inverter Control with W55RP20-EVB-PICO” at the 25th Open Edge Device Study Group (Sony HQ, June 18, 2025) — so more exciting updates are coming soon.

✅ Conclusion

This case proves that WIZnet’s W55RP20-EVB-PICO is not just a development board,
but a practical, cost-effective, and reliable solution for agricultural IoT automation.

👉 Beyond agriculture, we can also imagine similar applications in smart homes, industrial IoT, and factory automation.