LOWCOST SOIL MOISTURE SENSING AND DATABASE INTEGRATION LARIMAR
LOW-COST SOIL MOISTURE SENSING AND DATABASE INTEGRATION LARIMAR AND WASHINGTON COUNTY The Project Globally, irrigation is a vital aspect of agriculture and crop production. Irrigation and water rights have been a large expense in agriculture, which makes water loss a primary concern. In order to minimize this waste, the moisture within the soil must be monitored accurately and precisely. Through a collaboration with Dr. Jay Ham and the Irrigation Innovation Consortium (IIC), our internship was tasked with assisting with the development of soil moisture sensors in conjunction with control panels developed by Dr. Jay Ham. We were also charged with managing the research at the IIC. The IIC is a collaborative research effort to accelerate the development and adoption of water and energy efficient irrigation technologies and practices through public-private partnerships. The overarching goal of the IIC is to create an internationally recognized, selfsustaining center of excellence that promotes and enhances water and energy efficiency in irrigation, ultimately creating greater resiliency in food and irrigated landscape systems. The internship tasks included various activities involving these control panels and sensors. We were tasked with fabricating the sensors and control panels, assembling the unit that would contain all the components, designing an easy to use mount, selecting a proper location for the sensors, implementing an accessible database, and sending a completed unit to Dr. Joel Schneekloth at the extension office in Akron, Colorado to gauge how easy this sensor would be to use. Sensor Design and Implementation Online Database DESIGN AND ASSEMBLY An integral aspect of this project was integrating our sensors into an easily accessible database. In order to meet this goal, an online database called Ubidots was selected. This database was selected for the following reasons: • Easy to access data • Data is collected in real time • Simple data organization and display • Mobile access to data • Easy to integrate our sensors placed a out. Resistors, capacitors, and other electrical components were and soldered onto the sensor board. Each sensor was placed into 3 D printed enclosure and filled with epoxy to keep water and soil Figure A: Ian Aksland assisting with sensor fabrication. Figure B: Fabricated sensor. Figure C: Epoxy enclosed sensors. Models were created in Solid. Works and 3 D printed in a material called PETG. A 3 D printed mount was used to hold the batteries and control panel in the box. Glands were used to create a watertight seal around the sensor wires. A cellular microcontroller was used to collect, process, and deliver data to a cloud server. Figure D: 3 D printer used for this project. Internship Goals 1. Gain experience in research project development and implementation. 2. Familiarization with on-farm applied research. 3. Gain hands on knowledge and experience in research and business relationship development for consortium projects. 4. Development and integration of low-cost soil moisture sensors into an accessible database. Rustin Jensen and Luke Stark Velcroseen Figure E: Parts ready for assembly. Figure F: Assembled sensor unit with cellular microcontroller. In order to make the mount easy to install, we decided to use a like attachment mechanism. Examples of this mechanism can be below. Figure G: One slot design. Figure H: Velcro mechanism example. Scan this QR code to be directed to the online database. Figure J: Mobile access to database. Figure K: Real time data collection. Farm Management and Business Throughout working at the IIC over the summer, various skills were learned regarding irrigation, farm management, and business relations. Examples include: • Irrigation scheduling • Gated pipe and siphon tube irrigation • Effective research methods data collection • Cloud database management • Sensor Installation • Industry engagement and communication Figure I: Two slot design. Engineering Education Throughout the entire development and integration process, many agronomic and engineering skills were learned • Electrical engineering design for sensor boards • Effective professional communication skills • Team skills between • Irrigation management skills • Soil physics Ansley Brown (Assistant Director) Dr. Allan Andales (Professor of Irrigation) Dr. Joel Schneekloth (Water Resources Specialist) Dr. Jay Ham (Professor of Micrometeorology) Dr. Reagan Waskom (Director of Colorado Water Center) Figure L: IIC field work. INSTALLATION An installation video was created as part of this internship in order to assist commercial users in installing the sensors. Scan this QR code to be directed to the video. Future Work Future work includes: • Sensor calibration in various soil types • Further testing and designing of box mount • Further simplification and organization of database • More research in easy of use by commercial users • Overall field testing of whole system Walter Scott, Jr. College of Engineering
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