Case Study: Sense-W Ultra-Low-Profile Pot Scale

WIRL designed, developed, and manufactured Sense-W — an ultra-thin pot scale that delivers gram-level irrigation insight over LoRa, survives full submersion, and runs for years on a single battery budget.

Platform

Sense-W individual pot scale

The Challenge: Accuracy in Millimeters

Individual pot weight is one of the most direct signals of irrigation need, but commercial scales are bulky, power-hungry, and poorly suited to dense benches where every millimeter of height and every cable run matters. The product had to sit under a pot, survive wash-down and submersion, talk across a large facility, and run for years without battery swaps.

An ultra-thin mechanical envelope left almost no volume for load cells, antenna, battery, and sealing — design and manufacturability were tightly coupled from day one.

Wet, irrigation-heavy environments demanded a true IP68 path: ASA materials, sealed electronics, and a form factor that could be fully submerged without sacrificing RF or sensing performance.

Approach

From thin envelope to field-ready product

We treated Sense-W as a full product program — mechanical, electronics, firmware, RF, and manufacturing — so the ultra-low profile remained a shipped constraint rather than a rendering that could not be built.

1. Ultra-Low-Profile Mechanical & Sensing Stack

Sense-W is a ring-shaped weighing platform with a side-mounted electronics module, manufactured in ASA for chemical and moisture resistance. Thin-Envelope Integration: Load sensing, structural stiffness, and sealing had to coexist in a profile thin enough to live under individual pots without lifting the canopy or breaking bench ergonomics. Manufacturability Under Constraint: The same ultra-thin geometry that defined the product also constrained tooling, PCB outline, and assembly — WIRL owned industrial design through DFM so the envelope stayed manufacturable at volume.

2. DSP Accuracy with Multi-Radio Connectivity

Weight alone is not useful if the reading drifts or the device cannot report from deep in a greenhouse. DSP Signal Chain: On-device digital signal processing stabilizes measurements across the 0–10 kg range at 5 g accuracy, even when pots, media, and irrigation noise challenge a naive load-cell readout. LoRa · NFC · BLE: LoRa carries telemetry up to ~1 km for facility-scale coverage. NFC and BLE support provisioning, local service, and short-range workflows without forcing every interaction through the long-range link.

3. IP68 & Five-Year Power Budget

Grow environments punish enclosures and batteries alike. Submersible Design: The system was engineered toward an IP68 rating so units can be washed down or fully submerged without compromising the sealed electronics module. Ultra-Low Power: Sleep budgeting, radio duty cycle, and component selection were tuned so the device can target up to five years of battery life at the intended sampling and uplink schedule — avoiding a constant field battery program.