Low cost climate station for smart agriculture applications with photovoltaic energy and wireless communication
Measuring climatic conditions is a fundamental task for a wide array of scientific and practical fields. Weather variables change depending on position and time, especially in tropical zones without seasons. Additionally, the increasing development of precision or smart agriculture makes it necessary to improve the measurement systems while widely distributing them at the location of crops. For these reasons, in this work, the design, construction and fabrication of an adaptable autonomous solar-powered climatic station with wireless 3G or WiFi communication is presented. The station measures relative humidity, temperature, atmospheric pressure, precipitation, wind speed, and light radiation. In addition, the system monitors the charge state of the main battery and the energy generated by the photovoltaic module to act as a reference cell for solar energy generation capability and agrivoltaic potential in the installation area. The station can be remotely controlled and reconfigured. The collected data from all sensors can be uploaded to the cloud in real-time. This initiative aims at enhancing the development of free and open source hardware that can be used by the agricultural sector and that allows professionals in the area to improve harvest yield and production conditions.
- Full source Available online: https://doi.org/10.17605/OSF.IO/NTVXG
- Subject areas: Engineering, Instrumentation, Internet of things
- Hardware type: Measuring physical properties and in-lab sensors, Field measurements and sensors, Electrical engineering and computer science
- Open source license: Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike license
- Cost of hardware: USD 512 (WiFi communication) - USD 565 (3G communication)
Keywords[edit | edit source]
Climate; Internet of Things (IoT); Photovoltaic energy; Wireless communication; Meteorology; Climatic variables; environmental variables; Internet of Things (IoT); low cost; radiation shield; 3-D printing; open hardware; environmental monitoring; sensing; environmental sensing; additive manufacturing; smart agriculture
See also[edit | edit source]
- Applications of Open Source 3-D Printing on Small Farms
- Open-Source Script for Design and 3D Printing of Porous Structures for Soil Science
- Low-cost air, noise, and light pollution measuring station with wireless communication and tinyML
The Western Innovation for Renewable Energy (WIRED) system is currently under construction to test out new open source methods to reduce PV systems costs and enable novel forms of agrivoltaics including the world's first agrivoltaic agrotunnel.
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- A Farmer's Guide to Going Solar (NREL)
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- 2021 review
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In the News[edit source]
- How agrivoltaics is marrying food production with green energy in Alberta CBC
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- Comment l’agrivoltaïque associe production alimentaire et énergie verte Les Affaires
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- Kanada: coraz popularniejsza agrowoltaika: rolnictwo i produkcja energii w jednym MSN Poland
- Agrivoltaics: Harvesting the sun to benefit farmers, crops, and livestock Shareable
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