Support of CEA Applications with Telepresence

To establish successful CEA operations, education, training, and experience for the system operators are required. Decision support from off-site consultants or other support groups can be beneficial to help the operation, but to provide an effective response, they require environmental information and plant status, as well as, easy access to sufficient data.  Telepresence procedures can improve remote decision support of CEA facilities through environmental monitoring, controlling, decision-support of operations, crop diagnostics, system diagnostics, and distance education, by using web cameras, climate control computers, and email. These practices have provided effective support within several applications which will be reported.