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SU 2.0: A Marketable Low-Power Wireless Sensing Unit for Hydration Automation

Authors:
Navid Shaghaghi
Nicholas Kniveton
Jesse Mayer
Will Tuttle
Peter Ferguson

Keywords: 3D Printing; Agricultural Internet of Things (IoT); Hydration Automation; Irrigation System; Sensing Units.

Abstract:
The status of crops, water tanks, and various other components of modern agricultural irrigation systems can be sensed and valves and pumps can automatically be actuated to ensure the distribution of adequate water to all parts of the system. In previous work, we have discussed the design and implementation of low cost, small factor, and sustainable Sensing Units (SUs) which use ultrasonic sensors to measure the available empty space in a water tank and communicate the water levels to the Actuating Unit (AU) they are assigned to, so that the AU can operate the valves and/or pumps necessary to send the exact amount of water needed to restore the tanks’ designated water levels. There, we indicated that a future step is the redesign of the circuitry in order to shrink the overall size of the SU, increase its energy efficiency, and enable the addition of new environmental sensors such a temperature sensors that can warn the users or take automated action when the freezing of the water in the tanks is predicted and/or sensed. Also, in previous work we have discussed the design and 3D Printing of a water proofed, cost effective, and environmentally friendly custom encasement for the SUs and indicated that a next step is to redesign the internals of the SU casing in order to allow for the addition of new components while reducing the size of the casing as an effort to reduce the amount of material used and hence enhance the system while further reducing the SUs’ cost. This paper is to report on the success of all these steps and more which collectively enable the production of a marketable smart agricultural environment monitoring SU for irrigation automation.

Pages: 33 to 39

Copyright: Copyright (c) IARIA, 2020

Publication date: October 25, 2020

Published in: conference

ISSN: 2326-9324

ISBN: 978-1-61208-814-3

Location: Nice, France

Dates: from October 25, 2020 to October 29, 2020