iMETOS ECO D3 line has been one of the most important products for the growth of Pessl Instruments in the last decade. It has been a reliable and cost-effective solution, designed for basic soil moisture monitoring, irrigation management, frost protection and hydrology (rainfall, water level, etc.), developed with Pessl Instruments’ long experiences in the field of IoT agriculture. The PI-Bus connector allowed the connection of many nodes in a cable chain with specific soil moisture sensors in different zones. This solved the problem at that time to reach distant areas and maintain a reasonable price having only one device.

iMETOS ECO D3 has been also the perfect product for specific applications like frost; in fact, the board had 3 inputs for high precision PT1000 temperature sensors: air, dry bulb and wet bulb temperature which permitted to send SMS warnings in real-time.

Heavy rain, and water level in rivers and wells could be measured to warn about flood risks. Monitoring microclimatic conditions allowed a site-specific weather forecast corrected with local measurements. Diseases models could be run with the leaf wetness, rain, temperature and relative humidity sensors.

We are glad that this product was a big success and fulfilled the expectations of all our clients.

Why did it get discontinued?

Firstly, we saw a big shift in the demand of the market that moved ahead with newer, smaller and wireless IoT. On the other side, a big shortage of older components caused by a combination of lingering COVID-related manufacturing disruptions in East Asia, limited availability of critical materials and growing demand for electronic devices led us to the final decision to discontinue the iMETOS ECO D3 line.

However, Pessl Instruments took a step ahead and has recently developed a full range of low-power and low-budget devices which will do more than just replace the retired iMETOS ECO D3!

What comes next?

The successor will be the µMETOS NB-IoT and we believe it will be a great replacement looking at the future of IoT with many advantages:

• lower price and lower power consumption device: with the NBIoT/CatM1 technology it has much less power uptake and we can set more frequent measuring and transmission intervals;
• multiple sensors are directly connected on the board from weather to soil moisture monitoring with no need for any additional interface, resulting in a big cost saving.

µMETOS NB-IoT does come with some limitations:

• it does not support GPS but the user can set the location in FieldClimate him/herself;
• does not support cable chains (BUS) but only sensors directly connected on the board which makes it a “boxed product” that reaches the user faster;
• does not have an option of SMS from the station but the user can set web notifications and e-mail alerts directly from the server.

µMETOS is a real state-of-the-art wireless IoT device at a very competitive price level.

For those clients who are looking for full flexibility, the high-end iMETOS 3.3 is still available to cover all the limits of the µMETOS line, with the possibility to do extra configurations and can handle many chains as well as up 16 wire radio nodes and all the sensors through the intelligent sensor bus system.

We are looking forward to the new era of both Pessl Instruments and smart-agriculture technology development.

How will this affect users of iMETOS ECO D3?

We assure that iMETOS ECO D3 users won’t be affected by the discontinuation. The support & firmware updates will still be ongoing. If you have any concerns, don’t hesitate to reach out.