## 5 Discussion
Placing the antenna underground inside the main electronics box enclosure (i.e., at 10 cm depth) resulted in a signal power drop of 8 dBm, approximately. The latter drop value was almost doubled under high soil moisture conditions. This fact does not cancel the usefulness of burying the whole node, as LoRa technology leaves enough margin for signal reception thanks to its high sensitivity and noise immunity. * Every specific change in the hardware and/or software configuration, even if performed by expert personnel, should be thoroughly checked for its impact, as almost negligible changes of this type may lead to dramatic performance deterioration. The alternative implementation variants should be archived and documented meticulously, allowing rollback to the most recent stable version. The custom and simple instantaneous amperage consumption measuring device used has been proved a valuable tool in the whole system verification process. * The methods followed utilize lightweight and small microcontrollers, radios, and accompanying electronic components as well as software tools that are both generic and affordable. They also incorporate efficient node power management and communication techniques, while the selection of an RPi unit as the sink/gateway node participant further facilitates the edge computing potential and the interconnection options of the main wireless sensor network. These arrangements make the system being presented ideal for supporting (after minor modifications) a wide range of data monitoring applications apart from the soil-specific ones (e.g., greenhouse IoT or precision livestock farming). To recapitulate, it is important for the scientific community to have a clear view of the design, implementation, and operation performance details of the underlying data harvesting and processing infrastructures and also of their limitations and strengths. Thisknowledge allows for a very efficient use of the hardware and software available and does not necessarily limit potential extensions supported by the present or forthcoming participating modules. In practice, many design, implementation, and performance details are often overlooked by the persons in charge, thus resulting in system underperformance or failures. The awareness of these details is beneficial for demystifying things and bridging the gaps among experts of different specialties. It should be noted though that the system being presented does not provide a universal solution for every potential IoT-related problem, and several issues require further efforts and adaptation. Among these are the following:  
* The approach being presented, in its current form, is rather scientific community-oriented and thus does not provide the end-user friendliness required for wide acceptance by the average farmer. This shortcoming can be overridden by supplementing the system with more \"fresh\" software packages and services running on the gateway node and the cloud, like the ones described in [47; 48]. Nevertheless, it is a well-defined process of moderate difficulty that can be addressed in the near future to a satisfactory extent. * The data harvesting implementation presupposes a sink node that always remains active, waiting and collecting data from the sensor nodes. Although this requirement can be supported by a larger battery and photovoltaic panel arrangement, it is important to investigate the establishment of an efficient signaling mechanism between the sensor nodes and the sink in order to allow the sink to sleep as well and thus to reduce its average consumption, extending its life on batteries. Dynamic transmission power adaptation/optimization techniques of the participating nodes, e.g., according to distance, humidity, or vegetation characteristics, and potential multi-hop routing behavior pose additional challenges for future investigation.