Development of Internet of Things Systems for Monitoring Agricultural Silos

Internet of things is a recent advancement in the technological world. Agriculture being the art and science of cultivating the soil, growing crops, and raising livestock for human consumption requires a day-to-day monitoring and observation of the farm produce. Internet of things enables farmers to obtain data surveys and monitor their farm and storage facilities in real-time. This research is addressing a logical study of the current and potential application of internet of things IoT in agricultural silos, where spatial data, highly varying physical environmental factors, task diversity and mobile devices pose a sole challenge to be overcome compared to other agricultural systems. In this research, a smart security and monitoring device is developed for Agricultural products (Maize) using the Internet of things to observe and preserve storage environment both physically and autonomously. Data is deposited in MySQL database and the communication with the sensed data and webserver is recognized with the help of Arduino. The research is supported by smart phone via android app which increases its flexibility. Monitoring and documenting of data can be achieved on the android app. The system is tested on standardized silo and the result was as expected. The result of the study established that there is a slight difference between the Temperature (17-31 oC) and Humidity (52-78%) obtained from the device and optimum Temperature (18-27 ºC) and Humidity (62-70%) required for maize storage which makes it a better method when compared with the conventional method of storing maize. The result obtained further shows that temperature, humidity, and moisture content contributed to losses in weight of the maize stored if not monitored and maintained during the research period.