New Product Post – SenseCAP Combo 5-in-1 Sensor with 4G
One device. Five environmental parameters. 4G connectivity. Solar-powered operation. And room to connect up to 10 additional sensors.
Hello everyone, and welcome to another new product post from Seeed Studio!
Environmental data plays an important role in greenhouse cultivation, especially when growing high-value fruits and vegetables. Temperature, humidity, CO₂, light, and atmospheric pressure can all provide valuable insights into growing conditions. However, monitoring all these parameters can become complicated when each one requires a separate sensor, communication interface, power source, and data logger.
What if you could bring these essential measurements together in one device while still having the flexibility to expand your system as your project grows?
Meet the SenseCAP Combo 5-in-1 Sensor with 4G, a compact, low-power environmental monitoring solution designed to make multi-parameter sensing and remote data collection simpler.
Five Key Environmental Parameters in One Device
SenseCAP Combo combines five built-in environmental sensors to measure temperature, humidity, atmospheric pressure, light intensity, and CO₂. It also calculates dew point from temperature and humidity measurements, giving users additional environmental information without requiring another sensor.
Instead of installing several standalone devices around a site, SenseCAP Combo brings these measurements together in a single monitoring node. This simplifies deployment and reduces the number of devices that need to be installed and maintained.
The built-in sensors cover a wide range of environmental conditions. The temperature sensor measures from -40°C to +85°C, while the humidity sensor covers 0–100% RH. The light sensor supports measurements up to 200,000 lux, and the CO₂ sensor measures from 0 to 10,000 ppm.
With these capabilities, SenseCAP Combo is well suited to greenhouse monitoring, precision agriculture, environmental observation, and other applications where several environmental parameters need to be monitored together.
What If Your Projects Need More Than Five Sensors?
One of the things we really wanted to highlight about SenseCAP Combo is that it isn’t limited to its built-in sensors.
The device includes an RS485 interface supporting the Modbus-RTU protocol, allowing users to connect external industrial sensors. With splitters , SenseCAP Combo can support up to 10 external RS485 sensorssuch as a 3-in-1 soil sensor, suitable for soil, substrate, rockwool, and cocopeat etc. SenseCAP Combo provides both 5V and 12V power outputs for compatible external devices.
This opens up many possibilities. You can add external sensors, not only for soil moisture, temperature & EC, but also sensors for leaf wetness & temperature, PAR (photosynthetically active radiation) among many other parameters. You can explore our collection of MODBUS-RS485 sensors here.
In other words, SenseCAP Combo can start as a five-parameter environmental monitoring device and can grow into a much more comprehensive sensing system as your project requirements evolve.
4G Connectivity for Remote Monitoring
Measuring the data with sensors accurately is only half of the story. The real values show when that the measured data can reach you as expected wherever you are.
SenseCAP Combo uses global 4G Cat.1 cellular connectivity to transmit collected data remotely. It communicates using the MQTT protocol, allowing data to be uploaded to the SenseCAP Cloud Platform or a user’s designated configured server.
This makes it especially useful for locations where Wi-Fi is not available/ not stable or wired options create too many clusters, making it too difficult to maintain.
SenseCAP Combo is specifically designed for environmental monitoring in greenhouses. As long as there is cellular coverage in your greenhouses, environmental data can be transmitted according to your configured intervals. What’s more, the ability to connect to a third-party MQTT server also makes SenseCAP Combo easier to integrate into existing IoT platforms and data pipelines.
Solar Power + Battery Backup for Long-Term Deployment
Environmental monitoring projects also often face another challenge: power.
SenseCAP Combo addresses this with an integrated 1W solar panel and a 5200mAh rechargeable Li-ion battery. Under suitable conditions, the battery can provide more than two weeks of continuous operation without solar charging, helping the device keep working through periods of low sunlight, rainy weather, or power interruptions.
The device can also be powered through its USB Type-C interface or an external DC power supply, providing flexibility for different deployment environments.
This combination of solar charging and battery backup makes SenseCAP Combo well suited to long-term monitoring applications where frequent battery replacement or on-site maintenance is inconvenient.
What Happens When the 4G Signal Drops?
Our facilities aren’t always blessed with perfect connectivity. There might be sudden glitches of 4G connectivity due to harsh weather or other reasons.
Instead of simply losing data whenever the cellular connection becomes unavailable, SenseCAP Combo can locally cache up to 500,000 data records.
Once connectivity is restored, the stored data can automatically be uploaded. Historical data can also be exported locally, helping reduce the risk of losing valuable environmental information during temporary communication interruptions.
For applications involving long-term environmental monitoring, this can make a significant difference. A temporary network outage doesn’t necessarily have to mean a permanent gap in your dataset.
Designed for Easy Deployment
We know that installation means manual resources. If it takes a lot of time and effort to install the devices, the accumulated costs pile up, especially in large deployments. We agree that deploying an IoT sensor shouldn’t require a complicated installation process.
SenseCAP Combo supports both hanging installation and pole mounting, giving users flexibility depending on the deployment environment. The device can be hung from an overhead structure or be mounted on a pole using suitable brackets.
The enclosure is made from PC/ASA material and features an IPX5 rating with a UV-resistant louvre box/ solar radition shield, helping the device measure accurate data while withstanding the environment in greenhouses.
Designed for greenhouse and indoor agricultural environments, the device is designed to operate from 0°C to 40°C with 0–100% RH non-condensing humidity.
From Sensor to Cloud (Product System Architecture)
Another important part of SenseCAP Combo is the software experience.
The device integrates with the SenseCAP Cloud Platform and SenseCraft App, giving users a way to bind devices, monitor real-time data, manage configurations, and access historical information.
For users who want to build their own applications, SenseCAP Combo also supports HTTP API, MQTT API, and WebSocket API, making it possible to integrate collected environmental data into third-party platforms and custom applications. See more details at SenseCAP API Document here.
Where can You Use SenseCAP Combo?
While SenseCAP Combo is specifically designed for environmental monitoring in greenhouses, we do receive a lot of inquiries about using them for other indoor scenarios where environmental data is important. From agriculture and livestock management to storage and education, SenseCAP Combo can be found in a variety of real-world environmental monitoring projects. Its five built-in environmental sensors, RS485 expansion, 4G connectivity, solar and battery power, and local data storage make it a flexible solution for collecting and managing environmental data across different applications.
(SenseCAP Combo deployed at a cherry tomato greenhouse in Shouguang, Weifang, Shandong)
The SenseCAP Combo 5-in-1 Sensor with 4G has been widely deloyed in greenhouses in China for the past 3 years. Seeing similar needs of such devices in different continents, we decided to make a global version for the global market. It is now available at a limited number as the first batch.
Get yours now: SenseCAP Combo 5-in-1 Sensor with 4G.
Should you have any questions or would like to discuss your projects with SenseCAP Combo and other devices from Seeed, contact us at [email protected]!
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