Inspiration
We saw a gap in one of the major industries contributing largely to our continent GDP which happens to be agriculture, where a regression was being witnessed and the future of sustainability in the agriculture Industry threatened by using of old skills to curb modern problems. thus we rode on the promise the IoT industry holds to deliver a future to the mordern industry. Also looking at how COVID-19 threatened business we feel it has never been imperative than now to be able to make plants and fields talk and for us to respond from where we are. This indeed holds a future to help the world cope with an imminent food security crisis given the rising population in Mother Africa
What it does
Our IoT based crop field monitoring System harbors a network of highly specialized sensor probes, fully solar powered and enabling the farmer to monitor important variables like Temp, Humidity, Soil moisture just but to mention a few. These probes communicate with each other directly wirelessly forming one of the most secure and reliable network infrastructures, the mesh network, Data logged can be viewed remotely on any Network Capable device in real time on an IoT dashboard which is pretty much of a system generated web page. Dedicated Drones can be used to capture real time satellite images of the whole field, determine overall progress of the farm, Detect and take care of any imminent Pest attack at an early stage by spraying pesticides as well as to Act as a security solution to monitor farm peripheries prone to intrusion The solution also allows the farmer to remotely switch on and off the irrigation system with just a tap OR swipe action when thresholds are breached. ALL of this simply means one thing for the farmer ,Ease of Doing business. Which then promotes an Increase in production
How we built it
This section will just give us a general overview of the technology used for implementation of the design.
Wi-Fi TECHNOLOGY
The wireless communications technologies usually referred to by the (trademarked) term “Wi-Fi” are those technologies based on the IEEE 802.11 standards. Wi-Fi (Wireless Fidelity) is the single most popular IoT communication protocol for wireless local area networks (WLAN). Intended as a general wireless communications protocol (think of Ethernet without 26 wires), 802.11 implementations are by far the most common form of wireless communication between PCs. Its designers recognized the need for security early on and included a security protocol in the original specification: Wired Equivalent Privacy, or WEP. It utilizes the IEEE 802.11 standard through 2.4 GHz UHF and 5 GHz frequencies. Wi-Fi provides internet access to devices that are within the range of about 100 meters from the source [13]. Wi-Fi has a data rate of up to 600 Mbps maximum, depending on channel frequency used and the number of antennas.
MQTT TECHNOLOGY
MQTT (Message Queuing Telemetry Transport) "The MQTT protocol uses a publish/subscribe (pubsub) messaging model that works in an extremely lightweight way. It is useful for making connections with remote locations where a small code is required and network bandwidth is at a premium." MQTT has the fastest data rates of most of the application layer protocols used, this is the same application layer protocol used for applications such as WhatsApp and Facebook. MQTT-SN (MQTT for Sensor Networks) – Is a lightweight publish/subscribe application protocol which is designed specifically for machine-to-machine communication and
Challenges we ran into
Most of our team members where struggling very much with connectivity so at times the tasks where pretty difficult to handle for the remaining Team complement. So many brilliant ideas that we had, we struggled to scap off some of them.
Accomplishments that we're proud of
As so tiring as it was we managed to maintain team spirit Our project mapping came out as we expected It was a good learning curve especially the activities with the mentors We helped each other meet the majority of the expectations we had Had some mentors cheer us up and promise further engagement post the hackathon Made new friends thanks to the organisers, just wowed at the promise that fellow young people hold for our Continent.
What we learned
Team spirit and team work How to work under pressure New skills, Miro was a new concept to us we struggled through but we promised each other never to give up The art of online collaboration How to build partnerships that work, enterpreneurship is never a one person or a one group journey Complementing each others skills and weaknesses to archieve a common goal
What's next for Hybrid Agri-IoT field Monitor & Precision Irrigation System
We are going to develop further this project using the partnerships we got from this hackathon to realize the goals and rationale we had in mind when we settled for it. Improve on the issues highlighted by potential users. Look for funding to develop a solution that can be tested first on a small plot
Built With
- arduino
- iot
- mqtt
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