Smart monitoring, using real-time environmental sensing with links to server-side data processing/modeling, allows progression from data acquisition to useful information generation. The use of modern technology such as mobile phones to provide imagery and other types of data along with GPS-derived coordinates enables researchers and stakeholders to integrate ground-based observations with existing datasets. We have developed an infrastructure linking mobile communications, server-side processing and storage of data and imagery, and field-based access to existing spatial datasets. This infrastructure has been used for the development of a number of mobile phone apps (applications) and web-based applications, and has proved useful for stakeholders in agriculture, science and policy. In addition to giving information on the capacity development, we demonstrate useful applications relating to the upload, interpretation and integration of data (e.g. automated interpretation of soil profile imagery, carbon content estimation from soil colour) while focusing on the technical aspects of the underpinning system.