Rationale

Soil Moisture Sensors are commonly applied in agriculture, environmental science, and climate science to measure the water content in soils. Bad irrigation management decreases crop yields and quality, increases the requirement of fertiliser, is costly, wasteful and time consuming. By collecting water content data, irrigation systems can be efficiently managed as the practitioner understands the loss of water from the soil caused by evaporation and plant uptake.

When water is poured into soil it fills the air space between soil particles. The sensor buried in the soil, measures the percentage of water to the percentage of soil present. Water retention within the soil can vary depending on the soil texture, environmental temperature, amount of organic contents and the type of crops.

Night Owl, Foundation University (FU) based Arts and Technology incubator, began developing this project to assist the campus grounds keepers and improve FU’s agricultural production. The sensor is mounted onto a robot arm that is used to penetrate the soil. All components of the arm mechanism have been produced using a 3D printer. Movement of the robot and the sensor arm is controlled by micro-controller to connect all motor parts to the vex controller.

Software

* Make use of existing open source software

Arduino Software (IDE)

* Software for creating solid 3D objects

OpenSCAD (The Programmers Solid 3D CAD Modeller)

* Software for engineering the Ultimaker 3D Printer

Cura 3D Printing Slicing Software

* 3D Printing Community

MarkerBot’s Thingyverse (Design Community for discovering, making, and sharing 3D printable things.)

Hardware

* 3D Printing

Ultimaker 3D Printer

Current Sprint

The Galileo can control the motors of the rover

The rover can run both the sensors and motors from one and the same power supply

Backlog

The rover is able to independently drive around a pre-set area

The rover is able to avoid obstacles

A flexible arm can accurately deploy sensors

Progress

Finished User Stories

The farmer wants to see a web-based dashboard with real-time sensor data from the rover