Abstract
The Internet of Things has a high impact on upgrade and transformation of the traditional greenhouse agricultural techniques. It is necessary to control the environmental factors for obtaining the optimum growth conditions for the crop and extend the production season to get the optimum yield. These aspects are fundamental for Agriculture 4.0, that uses technology not simply for the sake of innovation but to improve and address the real needs of consumers. In this paper, a prototype of a low-cost electronic platform for real time greenhouse environment monitoring has been designed, developed and built. The prototype has been developed with the purpose of firmware and software prototyping, in order to make the most of device performances. The electronic board is composed by a Main Board, a Green House Core, a Wi-Fi Module, a RS485 Module, an Analog-to-Digital Converter Module and a USB Module. The system permits to collect data by external sensors, elaborate and send them to external devices as laptop, smartphone and internet gateway, using both wired and wireless connection. These data concern to main greenhouse environmental parameters, such as air temperature, humidity, solar radiation, air velocity and CO2 concentration. A Web application has been implemented to allow users a consultation of greenhouse environmental state in a simple and fast way.
Highlights
The Internet of Things (IoT) represents a set of technologies which refer to the interconnection and data exchange between sensors and electronic devices
The hardware of our electronic platform has been designed in modular way with the goal to test several combinations with optimized dedicated firmware and software, based on the scenario where the device may be involved
(the Green House Core (GHC) module, the RS485 module and the Analog-to-Digital Converter (ADC) module, whose designs are shown in Figures 4, 6 and 7), and to develop, at a later time, a new compact board that includes only these chips
Summary
The Internet of Things (IoT) represents a set of technologies which refer to the interconnection and data exchange between sensors and electronic devices. From the point of view of a private user, the most important effects of the IoT will be visible in both working and domestic fields, with assisted living, smart homes and offices, e-health and enhanced learning [1]. As regards the primary sector, thanks to these recent research progresses, it was found that the old farming methods are unable to meet the needs of social development [2]. Agriculture 4.0 represents the coming agricultural revolution, which aims to improve and address the real needs of consumers and reengineer the value chain, using technological research [3]. Modern farms and agricultural operations will work in a different way, primarily because of improvement in Electronics 2020, 9, 726; doi:10.3390/electronics9050726 www.mdpi.com/journal/electronics
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