LumiGrow
Illuminating Profit-Growth
Solutions
- IoT
- AWS
- SaaS
- Cloud software
- Firmware
Services
- Team Service
- Engineering and Product Team
- Core Software Development Team
About LumiGrow
LumiGrow’s hardware and software systems allow clients to impact the biology of plants with a controllable lighting spectrum, a process that remains on the cutting edge of research.
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.
LumiGrow partnered with our broad team of experts, including embedded systems programmers, to help them pioneer technologies that would change the way farmers grow. The Client retained the MEV Team’s services as their core development team.
Client’s 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 remote 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 light intensity, spectrum, and photoperiod. The algorithm allows each grower to customize lighting that encourages growth and production for different plant types. This algorithm along with our control software makes it easy for growers to get maximum benefit from the LumiGrow lighting environment.
Firmware Collaboration
As Lumigrow’s product development team, we worked in tandem with their VP of engineering to align the tech strategy roadmap with their business goals. He was able to rely on MEV to take ownership of executing the technical strategy and roadmap.
Reducing Technical Debt
During the course of our multi-year engagement, we were constantly shipping new software and reducing technical debt. As LumiGrow’s technology partner, we focused on helping them balance the need for new features with maintaining high quality software. We provided system stability by establishing CI/CD, backups, system monitoring, and logging,and were able to extend our services to take care of hardware integration in addition to all their software needs.
MEV Team
Software Engineer
Software Engineer
System Engineer
QA Engineer
Results
- Creation of Intellectual Property and Trade Secrets
- Improved User Experience (UX)
- Measurable increase in system performance and usage as measured through system dashboard
- Greater scalability and resiliency as a result of moving to Cloud and SaaS
- 23x increase in new users over a three year timeframe
- Improved experience for LumiGrow's customers through MEV's customer support program
