Farm Weather stations will be helpful for open field plantations and is one of the
best-understood data capture requirements in agriculture. The micro weather data
comprises of temperature, humidity, pressure, rain, wind speed, wind direction,
solar radiation, evaporation, soil moisture, and temperature etc..
Temperature and humidity can be done with help of semiconductor sensors.
The way to measure rain is via gauges or tipping rain buckets. Wind speed and
direction sensors are analog sensors. The rate of evaporation can be monitored
using an evaporation PAN. A depth sensor can be used for automatic pan depth
measurements. For disease onset and prediction, four sensors, namely, Rain, Leaf
wetness, temperature, and humidity are critical. Leaf wetness sensors try to mimic
the presence of water on leaves using conductivity or capacitive measurements.
Temperature and humidity
are common across most of the
requirements. The plants require a
certain temperature and humidity range
to thrive. The fungi and pathogens
also thrive in certain environmental
conditions. Like, mildew worms in
grapes happen in certain leaf wetness,
temperature and rain conditions. open
field agriculture practitioners may also
need evaporation and solar radiation
data.
Rain and soil are also critical
variables. Soil needs to be monitored
at different depths. Water intensive
crops need soil moisture sensors to
check if the roots are getting water
or not. Soil nutrients like NPK need
to be monitored to check soil health.
Different soil can have different pH
and thus suitability for different crops.
The availability of the hyper local
weather data is critical to scope out
the farm level conditions. The data
captured from satellites are at a
much lower resolution and cannot
help answer farm level questions. A
grid of weather stations capturing
micro weather data can be deployed
to collect real-time data from the field
that can be used to analyzed weather
conditions and develop advisories.
Can build Arduino based weather stations on our own. Tutorials available online.
Or we can choose readymade farm weather station available in the markets. One such company is YuktIx technologies. You can contact them for more info.
YuktIx Technologies
www.yuktix.com
+91-9910908382
