Prototype Implementation of Actuator Sensor Network for Agricultural Usages

Abstract

Information technology (IT) agricultural systems for field observation and environmental control have attracted considerable attention. Recently, various kinds of dedicated devices for IT agricultural systems have been released for large-scale farmers. It is well known that introducing IT agricultural systems can enhance agricultural production. On the contrary, an initial cost of the system is quite expensive even if typical dedicated devices are introduced. Therefore, reducing an initial cost of the system is a big challenge to disseminate the IT agricultural systems among small and medium-sized farmers. This paper proposes a prototype of IT agricultural systems that can measure an environment and can control the environment according to the measured information. To mitigate the initial cost of the system, our prototype uses Arduino compatible boards that are one of well-known micro-computer boards for general purposes. Therefore, it has a flexibility for designing a hardware and a capability of software development on the Arduino integrated development environment. The proposed system consists of sensing and control devices, a gateway device, and a web service. The sensing and control devices have some sensors such as a temperature, humidity, and soil moisture sensors, and a control function of a water sprinkling. The web service provides a user interface to manage the information in the database system. Experimental results show that the developed prototype system can realize a periodic environmental monitoring and environmental control according to the measured information. Additionally, users can observe the environment visually through the web service.