Team:ZJU-China/Hardware
Device: Overview
Device System
Have you ever imagined automatic agriculture: AI will do all kinds of chores in the farmland, such as watering, fertilizing and controlling disease. As for human beings, we can do other works without caring anything in farmland, and just need to check some parameters of environment from our phones occasionally, to see if the crops grow healthily and strongly. This year, we made a giant leap in the realization of this concept.
We integrated Internet of Things (IOT), sensors, actuators and big data processing technique to construct a complete automatic agriculture system. It can monitor the environment parameters and crops’ status of health in real time. Meanwhile, it can also release signaling molecules or emit medium waves to control our endophyte---T.atrovide, to achieve a series of functions, for example, pathogen controlling. In short, our system use device to build a bridge between human and plants via T.atrovide.
Fig.1 An overview of our device system
Our device system consists of main device (environment parameter monitoring device) and slave units (plants' status of health monitoring device and medium wave emission device). Considering the fact that plants’ health conditions differ in different area of farmland, we can put several slave units at a certain distance in the farmland while main device needs only one. The slave units can transform information to main device through 2.4G data transmission module.
Main Device
Main device is environment parameter monitoring device, which can measure some parameters such as temperature, humidity, the illumination time, rainfall, TVOC, etc. The result can be shown in the built-in screen and, in the meanwhile, be transformed to PC through 2.4G data transmission module in real time. What’s more,our main device can release some inducer such as DAPG, and water the plants according to soil moisture with an built-in pump.
What if there is no internet connection in farmland? Don’t worry! The transmission distance of our 2.4G data transmission module in our device is farther than 2.5km in theory and the device doesn’t need internet. Therefore, you can monitor the plants’ status of health at anywhere, anytime.
Fig.2 A photo of our main device
Click here to see more information about the main device.
Slave Device
Slave units consist of plants' status of health monitoring device---an e-nose system. It can monitor the plants' status of health in real time.
Know more about our device and result. What's more, we take advantage of several methods to enhance the stability of our system in real condition.
Fig.3 A photo of our slave device
Click here to see more information about the slave device.
Middle Wave Emission Device
We also designed a set of middle wave emission device, which can emit high-frequency alternating magnetic field to activate the ferrtin-TRPV pathway in our engineered T.atroviride, so that we regulate the expression of downstream gene in a long distance and make some influence on the growth of plants. More important, it can be applied in a large area of farmland together with a Unmanned Aerial Vehicle (UAV). Sadly, because of the time limitation, this device does not actually work as our excepted.
Fig.4 A photo of our middle wave emission device
Click here to see more information about the medium wave emission device.
Webapp
We also constructed a webapp, to which all data will be uploaded, to make it possible to check all the data in mobile device.
Fig.5 A screenshot of our webapp
Every components coupled with each other in this system. And total cost of our device system is less than $400 ( not including UAV). In this way, we can achieve an automatic agriculture system.
