LoRa enabled Smart Agriculture and Animal Husbandry system

Agriculture and animal husbandry is one of the most common sources of income for most of the population of rural life in India. But still, there are some villages/areas in developing countries like India, which are somewhat 4-8 miles away from big well connected cities, but there is no connectivity of Internet/Cellular services. These areas comes in shadow regions of connectivity. Also due to very few subscribers/consumers in such areas, telecom companies also hesitates to deploy any dedicated cellular/wireless connectivity infrastructure for them. In this project I want to tackle this problem using LoRa technology which will work as a Gateway. And we will connect these remote villages, their Agriculture/farms to mainstream connected cities, subsequently to internet. and Hence any farmer from such remote areas can monitor and manage his/her farm and also Animal Husbandry system from anywhere in the world.

This system will consist of two LoRa nodes. One (master node) will be at remote village and other (slave node) will be at nearest area city/town which is well connected with internet. This slave node will act as a Gateway node, means, it will relay whatever information/data coming from remote (master) node, to the Internet/cloud. Main advantage of LoRa technology (In this case) is - It is very easy, affordable and efficient to deploy in this scenario. Rather than use of other wired (Ethernet) or Wireless (GSM/NbIoT/WiFi) technologies.

Thank you #Hackster and #SEEED!

Thank you very much @Hackster @SEEEDStudio and other Contest Supporters for organizing such amazing contest, "IoT Into the Wild Contest for Sustainable Planet 2022" and sponsoring and supporting my Idea with "SenseCAP K1100 - The Sensor Protytype Kit with LoRa® and AI"

Getting Started with SenseCAP K1100

SEEED's SenseCAP K1100 is rapid prototyping kit with Wio Terminal, Grove - Wio-E5 LoRa Module, Grove - VOC and eCO2 Gas Sensor SGP30, Grove - Soil Moisture Sensor, Grove - Temp&Humi Sensor(SHT40) and Grove - Vision AI Module.

Wio Terminal - is a SAMD51-based microcontroller with Wireless (WiFi/Bluetooth/BLE) Connectivity. equipped with a 2.4” LCD Screen, onboard IMU(LIS3DHTR), Microphone, Buzzer, microSD card slot, Light sensor, and Infrared Emitter(IR 940nm).

You can go through following links to get started with, SenseCAP K1100 Kit and Wio Terminal.

https://wiki.seeedstudio.com/K1100-quickstart/

https://wiki.seeedstudio.com/K1100-Getting-Started/

https://wiki.seeedstudio.com/Wio-Terminal-Getting-Started/

Project concept

As shown in above block diagram I've used SenseCAP K1100 Kit as Master node, the node which will be at Farm/remote village location. SenseCAP kit have Wio Terminal and bunch of grove sensors (details given below), so it is very easy to connect and monitor pivotal physical parameters of farm/greenhouse. Like Temperature, Humidity, Soil moisture, Co2 levels in greenhouse, Air quality in greenhouse and cattle shed, Light/Brightness level etc. I've programmed Master node to facilitated with some edge level automations,

1. for irrigation system depending on soil moisture level.

2. Thermostat control for greenhouse system.

3. Air conditioning (Heater-Cooler and Exhaust Fan) system for Cattle shed.

4. cleaning/washing cattle shed with regular interval of time, and

5. Light Bulbs system according to brightness/darkness level.

All these actuator appliances like (Water pump, Exhaust fan, cooler, heater, Light bulbs will be connected to 8 channel relay module as shown in above diagram.

Currently master node is only programmed to act as a sender, so it only gather all parameters and send to receiver node(Gateway) via LoRa. Grove Wio E5 module came with SenseCAP K1100 Kit which endow Wio terminal with strong features of ultra-long transmitting range, great performance, and high efficiency by easily plug and play with Grove connector on board. By connecting Grove - Wio-terminal, enable to communicate with and control Wio-E5 conveniently by AT command through UART connection. This wireless radio module supports LoRa and LoRaWAN protocol on the EU868 & US915 frequency and (G)FSK, BPSK, (G)MSK, LoRa modulations.

Check out following links for more details

https://wiki.seeedstudio.com/LoRa-E5_STM32WLE5JC_Module/

https://wiki.seeedstudio.com/Grove_LoRa_E5_New_Version/

So, all the parameters mentioned above and the statuses of actuators/appliances will be reported to the receiver node via LoRa. All data will be sent in one packet with AT command with following sequence.

AT+MODE=TEST

AT+TEST=RFCFG, 866, SF12, 125, 12, 15, 14, ON, OFF, OFF

AT+TEST=TXLRPKT, "Data Packet"

or

AT+TEST=TXLRSTR, "Data String"

for more details about AT commands guide you can go through Wio-E5 AT Command Specification

Now, at the receiver node (Gateway), as shown in above block diagram, I've used NodeMCU ESP32S board which has onboard WiFi capability. but to receive the LoRa data came from remote master node we need LoRa technology receiver. So, I've interfaced NodeMCU board with Wio-E5 mini board from SEEED which have same Wio-E5 chip as of Grove Wio E5 module. This Wio-E5 mini also need to be connected using UART communication and uses AT command approach to get programmed to receive the LoRa packets sent from the master node.

So, to receive all the parameters mentioned above and the statuses of actuators/appliances in the receiver node via LoRa, we need to program it as a LoRa receiver with AT command with following sequence.

AT+MODE=TEST

AT+TEST=RXLRPKT

Note that the LoRa-E5 can receive the messages only in HEX format whereas it can transmit in both HEX as well as STRING format.

Now ESP32S+Wio E5 Mini will receive the data sent by remote master LoRa node. Then we need to parse that data to extract each parameters (Like temperature, humidity, CO2 etc.) Once we got the all the parameters and data at this receiver node. Then using ESP32's WiFi feature, we will connect to WiFi router and subsequently to the internet, and Hence we can send all that data to any IoT cloud service. So, I've used Arduino IoT cloud service. Which is online platform that makes it easy for you to create, deploy and monitor IoT projects. You can know more about Arduino Cloud and its features and Getting Started documentation on following links.

https://docs.arduino.cc/arduino-cloud/

https://docs.arduino.cc/arduino-cloud/getting-started/iot-cloud-getting-started

I've created thing and following dashboard to monitor view all the parameters of Farm/Greenhouse and Cattle shed (Animal husbandry) at one space.

When project becomes live, dashboard values will get updated as following

Hence Now, in this way one can monitor his/her farm/Greenhouse/Animal husbandry from anywhere in the world on Arduino IoT Cloud dashboard with PC/Smartphone with internet connectivity.

Video of Project Demo

Advantage of proposed Project Solution

Agricultural Farms which comes in these areas like (shadow regions) of connectivity (No GSM/WiFi/Ethernet), and which are in the vicinity (5-10Km) from well connected cities can be easily monitored and automatized. This same approach can also be useful for multiacre farms. Because even If we decided to deploy WiFi/Wired connectivity to cover such area, It would be very costly and inefficient than that of LoRa WAN approach. Solution used in this project implementation can save some cost in such cases.

Future

Currently master node is only programmed to act as a sender, so it only gather all parameters and send to receiver node(Gateway) via LoRa. But it can also enhanced to work in Ping-pong mode (Duplex mode), means It can transmit data as well as receives some command to control the environment. If this is possible then we can tweak with the existing edge level automation, configuration, can add notification systems and so on.

I've also planned to use and utilize "Grove - Vision AI Module" to identify the intruder and detect/count the number of cows in shed.

Suggestions about Project design, Circuits, code modifications, Optimization, Errors/Bugs findings and queries are most welcomed.

Credits

Thank you Hackster, SEEED Studio, all other Contest Supporters, peoples, websites and entities who helped me (directly/indirectly) in this project.