Livestock Farm Monitoring with iNut: Temperature, Humidity, NH3 & CO2 in the Barn

Livestock farmers face a risk that's hard to see with the naked eye: the air inside the barn. Decomposing manure and urine release NH3 gas, dense animal breathing builds up CO2, and temperature and humidity climb further on hot, humid days. Once these readings cross a threshold, animals stop eating, grow slower, and become prone to respiratory disease — and often the problem in the barn isn't noticed until the animals are already sick.

Manual checks are both laborious and slow to react: measuring by hand a few times a day can never catch the exact moment toxic gas spikes at midnight, and no one can watch the barn 24/7. iNut brings a different approach — let sensors measure continuously, let data drive the decisions, and let the system ventilate, cool, and notify people automatically when needed. The barn is "listened to" every minute, instead of being guessed at.

Every good decision starts with good data. iNut brings together the full set of barn microclimate indicators in one place: temperature, air humidity, ammonia gas (NH3), CO2, plus dust and H2S if needed — all updated in real time. Purpose-built sensors withstand the humidity, dust, and corrosive conditions of livestock barns, feeding data back to the gateway for threshold comparison and control commands.

Farms typically span multiple barn rows, storage areas, ponds, and waste treatment zones — running signal cables is both costly and prone to failure in damp conditions. iNut RS485 / WiFi Mesh transmits data wirelessly, with nodes relaying to one another automatically to cover the entire farm, and runs on solar power so it can be installed even far from any power source. Where there's no fixed internet, iNut PC serves as an edge gateway with 4G uplink.

Just set the threshold once for each indicator. When NH3 or CO2 exceeds a safe level → ventilation fans switch on automatically to draw the toxic gas out; when temperature rises → misting and cooling fans kick in to bring it down; once conditions are good again, they stop automatically to save power. The iNut Muro solution controls the microclimate through exactly this mechanism, combined with relays/valves that switch high-power loads for livestock barns.

Toxic gas usually spikes when few people are watching — at midnight, in the middle of a scorching afternoon, or when a power outage stops the fans. iNut PC at the edge layer runs logic locally and pushes alerts via Email/Telegram the instant a reading exceeds threshold or a device malfunctions, complete with the specific data of which pen is affected. Managers can respond in time instead of discovering the problem only after the animals are already stressed.

The entire farm fits neatly on one screen: iNut Platform (self-hosted cloud) builds a SCADA dashboard that tracks every barn, plots NH3/CO2/temperature/humidity trend charts, and stores history via iNut Datalogger; while the iNut app lets you view readings, adjust thresholds, and switch devices on/off remotely. If you need to integrate with existing systems, iNut OPC communicates via OPC UA / Modbus / XML-DA. A closed loop: measure → analyze → control → healthy livestock.

Farms are typically located in remote areas, where the power grid is unreliable and the environment is harsh. iNut devices keep running steadily thanks to damp- and dust-proof enclosures and solar power, transmitting data wirelessly back to the central hub. Install once, and data keeps flowing in regularly — farmers just need to check their phone and step in when the system reports something.

// Quick specs