コンパクトアグリサーバーの開発

Development of Compact Agri-server

Ryosuke SUGANO （指導教員 Kazuya KANDA）

1. INTRODUCTION

Recently, a great deal of research into the utilization of In-formation

and Communication Technology in agriculture from the perspective

of scientific transmission of agricultural technology is being carried

out. In the realm of agriculture, it is important to easily be able to

monitor the natural environment and the growth of crops. Stable

measurement over a long period of time and wide area is also

important. However, field monitoring is difficult to perform because

installation sites mostly lack infrastructure for providing power or

networking capabilities and precision instruments must endure

exposure to heat, cold, snow, moisture, rain, and dust.

2. MONITORING SYSTEM

The Agri-Server(hereinafter, AS) has been developed as an

environmental monitoring system based on the Field Server concept.

Specifically, the AS is a piece of equipment equipped with sensors to

measure the natural environment such as meteorological data and soil

data. It also has server and wireless communication functions and

network camera connectability for image acquisition. A photograph

of the AS exterior is displayed in Fig. 1.

The body of the AS is mainly composed of a main CPU board,

LCD panel, sensor boards and wireless LAN equipment. Its main

software configuration is a sensor data collection program, FTP

server, SSH server, CRON, data transfer and time synchronization,

etc. It is loaded with many sensors for information gathering in the

natural environment and agricultural field and is called one of the

sensor networks for field monitoring. As for the AS power supply,

due to the difficulties in the use of commercial power, natural energy

is utilized and power is supplied by a wind and solar power hybrid

power generation system. A lead-acid battery is used as the electrical

storage device.The network configuration diagram and equipment

configuration are displayed in Fig. 2 and Fig. 3. AS: 4 units are each

equipped with wireless LAN and, with a directional antenna, are

connected wirelessly with the omnidirectional antenna placed on the

roof of the store that directly sells local pro-duce ”Agri”(hereinafter,

AGRI) from two field sites. In The UECS standard XML format file

data sent from AS is stored in a data folder in a web server placed in

the Tsuruoka National College of Technology.

Fig. 3 Network system

Fig. 4 A Web page view on Web browser

Fig. 1 Photograph of AS

Fig. 2 System configuration of monitoring

The web server functions as a database server and application server

and converts sensor and image data to an SQLite database with Ruby

and makes viewing from outside possible through a web browser

with PHP script. The web page shows Fig. 4.

3. DEVELOPMENT OF COMPACT AS

We found some issues through installation AS. Three of issues are

cost, volume, Power consumption. We need to improve the AS.

A photograph of a compact AS exterior is displayed in Fig. 5

The Arduino is an embedded system that can be developed in the

environment with open source hardware and soft-ware. XBee

(Manufactured by DigiInternational) was used for the wireless

module and has extremely low power consumption. The

Specifications of compact AS are shown in Table.1.

The network configuration diagram are displayed in Fig. 6.The

compact AS measures climate data with sensors and the data is

wirelessly transmitted to the main unit using XBee. The master unit

transmits the data to the server in the laboratory through a basal plate

that is connected to the network (Ethernet shield).

Sensors connected to the compact AS monitor anemoscope,

anemometer, rain gage, air temperature, and humidity.

With PHP script, the server saves the sent data as a text file. These

processing is done by “CRON” every 15 minutes. The server data

can be accessed and viewed from an internet browser. There is also

the capability of graph display, not only text data. The graph display

was able to increase convenience with the use of Google services.

Actual measurements of air temperature and humidity were taken

outside a laboratory. The measurement results are shown in Fig.7.

By entering the date of the data to be browsed, graphical display is

possible. Also, if the terminal has a Web browser function, data can be

browsed without relying on the terminal. We have succeeded in

constructing the aimed-for small, low-cost, low-power electrical

system capable of implementing the required basic functions.

4. CONCLUSION

Field monitoring systems using AS were first installed in the cold

Shonai region where there is a lot of snowfall and ran on 100[%]

natural energy using a hybrid power generation system was for the

power supply.

Comparison of AS and Compact AS is showed in Table.2. We have

succeeded in constructing the aimed-for small, low-cost, low-power

electrical system capable of implementing the required basic

functions. Hereafter, we will investigate in-creasing the types of

sensor. Also, we intend to take actual measurements outdoors and

verify weather resistance, in particular snow resistance, as well as to

acquire data.

Fig. 5 Photograph of the compact AS prototype

Table.1 Specifications of the compact AS

Functions Specifications

Microcontroller Arduino UNO

Sensors Temperature (LM61)

Humidity (HIH-4030)

Anemoscope

Anemometer

Rain gage

Power supply Solar module (5[W])

Battery (12[V],9[Ah])

Communication XBee Pro Series2

Others Controller of charge

Fig. 6 Network system of Compact AS prototype

Fig. 7 A graph view at Web page on Google

Table.2 Comparison of AS and Compact AS

items AS Compact AS Reduction Rates[%]

Price $10000 $300 -97[%]

volume 3[m3] 0.4[m3] -86[%]

power 20[W] 1[W] less -95[%]