LumiGrow
Illuminating Profit-Growth for their Growers
A client since 2017, LumiGrow revolutionized horticulture with the first smart LED grow lights in North America.
Solutions
- IoT
- Amazon Web Services
- Digital Transformation
Services
- Software Development
- DevOps
- QA
- UX
ABOUT LUMIGROW
LumiGrow is the known leader in smart horticultural lighting. In 2007, LumiGrow was founded by scientists who were experts in plant growth and had discovered an algorithm for calculating the amount of light needed for plants based on light intensity, latitude, time of year, and length of day.
Taking advantage of MEV's End-to-End software development services, LumiGrow partnered with our broad team of experts, including embedded systems programmers, to help them pioneer technologies that would change the way farmers grow.
CLIENT CHALLENGES
LumiGrow's founders were struggling to turn their software ideas into reality.
LumiGrow sought to overcome:
CHALLENGING TECHNOLOGY
Smart lighting was a niche technology and expertise on the hardware side of the product was critical to success and not a lot of firms had this capability.
UNCHARTERED WATERS
LumiGrow had innovative ideas and needed a process and experienced team to help prioritize and develop working software, quickly and cost-effectively.
WHAT WE DID
After taking the time to understand LumiGrow’s needs, MEV team worked with the client on a few areas, including:
DISTRIBUTED COMMUNICATION ARCHITECTURE
Greenhouses are tall and large, so LumiGrow lights are sold with dedicated devices that enable lamps to be remotely controlled via WiFi. As LED grow lights increase, connection to WiFi becomes unreliable, so a mesh communication architecture using Bluetooth Low Energy (BLE) was designed to solve the problem. Devices are distributed as Leaders (with WiFi and Bluetooth modules) and Followers (only Bluetooth module). Our solution ensured a fast and stable flow of data that made for a scalable grow light system.
DLI ALGORITHM FOR SOLAR PREDICTION
The Daily Light Integral (DLI) algorithm is designed to create an optimal lighting environment that controls for light intensity, spectrum, and photoperiod. The algorithm allows each farmer to set up optimal lighting by plant type to produce faster and stronger. This algorithm along with our control software makes it easy for growers to get maximum benefit from the LumiGrow lighting environment. LumiGrow’s scientists and MEV's team worked together to make this defensible Intellectual Property a reality.
FIRMWARE COLLABORATION
MEV and LumiGrow engineers closely collaborated to make timely firmware updates. These updates fixed bugs and optimized product capabilities and roadmap progress.
REDUCING TECHNICAL DEBT
During the course of our multi-year engagement, we were constantly shipping new software and reducing technical debt. As the technology partner, we focused on helping LumiGrow balance the need for new features with the need to keep the software at the right level of quality. We provided system stability by establishing CI/CD, backups, system monitoring, and logging.
MEV Team
Results
LumiGrow has experienced positive results in various areas of their business, including:
Creation of Intellectual Property and Trade Secrets
Greater scalability and resiliency as a result of moving to Cloud and SaaS
Improved User Experience (UX)
23x increase in new users over a three-year timeframe
Measurable increase in system performance and usage as measured through system dashboard
Improved experience for LumiGrow's customers through MEV's customer support program
Technologies
we used.
