Uploaded November 2025 | Updated September 2026, 3 weeks ago
With 86 Bluetooth-enabled sensors that monitor water usage and soil conditions remotely, BYU researchers have created a field of the future. The new BYU Smart Bluetooth stakes technology promises to help reduce water waste in agriculture, with no reduction in crop yields.
Special thanks to BYU’s Fulton College of Engineering, College of Life Sciences
and College of Computing, Math and Science.
This project required the work of many collaborators including Neil Hansen (Plant & Wildlife Sciences), Brian Mazzeo (Electrical and Computer Engineering), Ruth Kerry (Geography) and Samuel Craven, (Electrical and Computer Engineering, PhD candidate)
More from BYU News:
BYU engineers are using Bluetooth to help farmers track precise water levels in their fields
A wheat field near Elberta, Utah, just became more tech-savvy than any other wheat field on earth, thanks to a talented team of BYU professors and students.
The team of engineers placed 86 Bluetooth devices throughout the 50-hectare (124-acre) field to measure the water levels across all areas of the field. Placing this many sensors in a commercial field is unprecedented, and it allows researchers to see unique patterns that have never before been captured.
These devices, called BYU Smart Bluetooth stakes, are advanced sensors that help gather new insights for precision farming. This technology is a significant tool that gauges the soil moisture in fields more accurately and allows farmers to better care for their fields.
A BYU PhD candidate, Samuel Craven, was a part of this project from the beginning.
“We took existing technology — they're the same kind of microchips that would be inside your Bluetooth headphones — and we put them on a platform, added solar powering, probes to measure soil moisture, and then just made the whole package waterproof and outdoor-capable so that it could be left for a long period of time,” Craven said.
Getting to that point required extensive research and experimentation, which was taken on by a collaborative research team built up of faculty and students from the geography and civil engineering departments on BYU’s campus.
Brian Mazzeo, a BYU electrical and computer engineering professor, led efforts to strategize a more effective watering routine for farmers using this technology.
“The core questions are, where is the water? How does it change? When should you turn on your sprinklers?” Mazzeo said. “These questions are what farmers need to know to be able to optimally irrigate their fields.”
These questions led to inspired research that became a reality when applied in the fields, allowing for real-time readouts of water levels in the soil.
Working through a drought is an expected challenge for farming in the West, including the desert lands of Utah. These devices provide a way to deliberately use water resources in the ways farmers need them.
“We’re solving real, practical problems,” said geography professor and project collaborator Ruth Kerry. “It's very heartening to realize we can solve these problems if we work together.”
We gratefully acknowledge Elberta Valley AG (Goshen, Utah) for permitting use of the Elberta field.
This work is supported by the Engineering for Precision Crop and Water Management (A1551) priority area of the Agriculture and Food Research Initiative Foundational and Applied Science Program, project award no. 2024-67021-42783, from the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s National Institute of Food and Agriculture. Any opinions, findings, conclusions, or recommendations expressed in this publication are those of the author(s) and should not be construed to represent any official USDA or U.S. Government determination or policy.
With 86 Bluetooth-enabled sensors that monitor water usage and soil conditions remotely, BYU researchers have created a field of the future. The new BYU Smart Bluetooth stakes technology promises to help reduce water waste in agriculture, with no reduction in crop yields.
Special thanks to BYU’s Fulton College of Engineering, College of Life Sciences
and College of Computing, Math and Science.
This project required the work of many collaborators including Neil Hansen (Plant & Wildlife Sciences), Brian Mazzeo (Electrical and Computer Engineering), Ruth Kerry (Geography) and Samuel Craven, (Electrical and Computer Engineering, PhD candidate)
More from BYU News:
BYU engineers are using Bluetooth to help farmers track precise water levels in their fields
A wheat field near Elberta, Utah, just became more tech-savvy than any other wheat field on earth, thanks to a talented team of BYU professors and students.
The team of engineers placed 86 Bluetooth devices throughout the 50-hectare (124-acre) field to measure the water levels across all areas of the field. Placing this many sensors in a commercial field is unprecedented, and it allows researchers to see unique patterns that have never before been captured.
These devices, called BYU Smart Bluetooth stakes, are advanced sensors that help gather new insights for precision farming. This technology is a significant tool that gauges the soil moisture in fields more accurately and allows farmers to better care for their fields.
A BYU PhD candidate, Samuel Craven, was a part of this project from the beginning.
“We took existing technology — they're the same kind of microchips that would be inside your Bluetooth headphones — and we put them on a platform, added solar powering, probes to measure soil moisture, and then just made the whole package waterproof and outdoor-capable so that it could be left for a long period of time,” Craven said.
Getting to that point required extensive research and experimentation, which was taken on by a collaborative research team built up of faculty and students from the geography and civil engineering departments on BYU’s campus.
Brian Mazzeo, a BYU electrical and computer engineering professor, led efforts to strategize a more effective watering routine for farmers using this technology.
“The core questions are, where is the water? How does it change? When should you turn on your sprinklers?” Mazzeo said. “These questions are what farmers need to know to be able to optimally irrigate their fields.”
These questions led to inspired research that became a reality when applied in the fields, allowing for real-time readouts of water levels in the soil.
Working through a drought is an expected challenge for farming in the West, including the desert lands of Utah. These devices provide a way to deliberately use water resources in the ways farmers need them.
“We’re solving real, practical problems,” said geography professor and project collaborator Ruth Kerry. “It's very heartening to realize we can solve these problems if we work together.”
We gratefully acknowledge Elberta Valley AG (Goshen, Utah) for permitting use of the Elberta field.
This work is supported by the Engineering for Precision Crop and Water Management (A1551) priority area of the Agriculture and Food Research Initiative Foundational and Applied Science Program, project award no. 2024-67021-42783, from the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s National Institute of Food and Agriculture. Any opinions, findings, conclusions, or recommendations expressed in this publication are those of the author(s) and should not be construed to represent any official USDA or U.S. Government determination or policy.
