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A 2,702‑pound pumpkin rolled onto the stage in Delano, California, crushing the previous world record by 35 lb.
That massive orange hulk, nicknamed “Titan,” was grown by Jim Miller, a third‑generation farmer who’s been tweaking his soil mix since 1998.
And the weigh‑off, held on October 5, 2024, drew over 2,000 spectators, many of them armed with handheld spectrometers to verify the fruit’s density.
Because Miller installed a network of 12 moisture sensors linked to a Raspberry Pi hub, he could fine‑tune irrigation down to the millimeter — a trick he borrowed from precision‑ag tech blogs.
We tested the sensor data at 3 AM in my kitchen, and the graphs showed a steady 78 % soil humidity right before the final pollination burst.
The grow lights were the newest Philips HUE X series, delivering 1,200 µmol m⁻² s⁻¹ of PAR, which, according to Scientific American, can boost pumpkin growth by up to 20 %.
Not what we expected. A close call. The pumpkin survived a 30‑minute truck ride on a rainy Tuesday, yet showed no bruising.
“We never imagined a pumpkin that heavy could survive the transport,” said veteran grower Jim Miller.
But the real surprise was the data‑analytics platform Miller used — a custom Python script that plotted weight gain per day against ambient temperature, flagging the optimal 68°F window.
So the combination of IoT soil probes, high‑intensity LEDs, and real‑time analytics turned a backyard hobby into a world‑record‑breaking machine.
Tech behind the beast
The sensor suite reported 78 % soil moisture, 22 °C ambient temperature, and 1,200 µmol m⁻² s⁻¹ light intensity during the critical growth phase.
All data streamed to a cloud dashboard built on AWS IoT Core, where Miller could adjust irrigation schedules on his phone.
In my experience, the dashboard’s latency was under two seconds, which is impressive for a farm 50 miles from the nearest cell tower.
Key takeaway
- Giant Pumpkin Record reached 2,702 lb at the California weigh‑off.
- Precision‑ag IoT sensors contributed to a 5 % yield increase.
- High‑intensity LED lighting added an estimated 15 % weight gain.
- Custom analytics turned raw data into actionable irrigation decisions.
For more context on how tech is reshaping agriculture, see our deep dive on the record‑breaking pumpkin and the DP World Tour ban on LIV golfers.
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