UHF radio telemery has been widely used for environmental monitoring since the 1990s and as such is one of the oldest technologies in the market.

The principal differences between Traditional UHF and Ranch Systems are:

• Traditional UHF systems are designed primarily for private radio frequencies (requiring license), whereas Ranch Systems uses Cellular, WiFi, 2.4GhZ and 900Mhz frequencies which do not require customers or resellers to obtain licenses. While Traditional UHF radios are sometimes able to transmit longer distances, Ranch Systems achieves the same coverage by multiple base stations.
• Traditional UHF systems typically involve a receiver gateway installed on an in-field Windows PC, and the reliability and data accessibility relies on this PC. Ranch Systems base stations link data directly via Cellular or Wifi to large, secure "tandem" servers on the Internet backbone.
• Traditional UHF systems are typically more expensive for similar functionality.
• The Ranch Systems products were designed from the beginning for relay and valve control - not just monitoring. Traditional UHF systems are primarily for monitoring only.
• Traditional UHF systems relies heavily on multi-hop "daisy chains" between radios. This leads to "weakest link" problems, when a failure of a single radio causes a string of other nodes to go "off the air".
• Traditional UHF systems do not offer any camera based crop monitoring

Based in Oakland, CA (USA) PureSense is primarily known for their Irrigation Manager software solution and do not generally market their telemetry technology separately.

The principal differences between PureSense and Ranch Systems are:

• PureSense is primarily selling their Irrigation Manager solution with hardware as an enabler. Ranch Systems seeks to provide a broad, open telemetry system for a variety of end-user applications.
• PureSense "SmartStations" are similar to Ranch Systems base stations, and can upload data directly to Internet servers via cellular. However Puresense lacks in-field nodes or substations, making multi-location monitoring very expensive, as a complete SmartStation is required at each location.
• PureSense Irrigation Manager is prescriptive, ie. promises to literally tell a farmer when to irrigate. Ranch Systems takes a humbler approach of providing as much relevant information as possible about the conditions in the field, but leaving the ultimate irrigation decision to the grower.
• The Ranch Systems products provide for relay and valve control - not just monitoring. PureSense is monitoring only.
• PureSense does not offer any camera based crop monitoring

Based in San Jose, CA (USA) Crossbow has primarily been a maker of sensor systems for aviation, and only recently (2008) entered the environmental monitoring market with their eKo line of mesh network nodes. However, in January 2010 Crossbow announced that they have exited the market and divested the eKo assets to an East-Coast firm called MEMSIC (details here). The comments below apply to the eKo product line as of the time of that sale. We do not yet have any information regarding MEMSIC's plans for the products.

The principal differences between Crossbow eKo and Ranch Systems are:

• eKo radios require the formation of a "mesh" with relatively short distances (~1000ft) between nodes across the area to be monitored. By comparison Ranch Systems radios can reach several miles in one hop. This makes eKo impractical for large sites, and unless the application calls for measuring something every 1000ft, it will often lead to a large number of redundant "relay" nodes, even for smaller installations.
• eKo systems route all data to a central gateway that resides on site. This is a small box that must be housed in an office environment close by the deployment. Ranch Systems base stations link data directly via Cellular or Wifi to large, secure "tandem" servers on the Internet backbone.
• In order to access eKo data from the Internet the eKo gateway acts as the Internet server in the field, so access is only as reliable and available as the DSL, satelite or other Internet connection to the field. By contrast Ranch Systems data is immediately forwarded to large servers on the Internet backbone where it is available and secure.
• eKo sytems only suport a very small set of sensors based on a proprietary "sensor bus" specification, currently only temperature, RH and one type of soil moisture sensor. Ranch Systems supports most commonly used sensors using open sensor interface standards.
• The eKo software is currently rudimentary compared to Ranch Systems, and is limited by having to run on the in-field gateway.
• The Ranch Systems products provide for relay and valve control - not just monitoring. eKo is monitoring only.
• eKo currently have few public reference customers compared to Ranch Systems.
• eKo does not offer any camera based crop monitoring