Low cost customized sensors devices
The Brown Marmorated Stink Bug Halyomorpha halys (HH) is an emerging pest of global importance for many agricultural crops. Field monitoring is crucial to obtain information on the actual presence and abundance of HH in order to organize timely and proper management actions, and also because chemical control has proved to be unsatisfactory. Driven by the quest of improving sustainability, the HALY.ID project proposes an autonomous field-monitoring system as well as an autonomous fruit-monitoring system to replace common human-based field monitoring of HH, and to detect the internally damaged fruits invisible to the naked eye. Sensing environmental conditions under which HH occurs is one cornerstone for a better understanding and handling of this pest.
Researchers with some knowledge in hardware design and low-level software can easily adapt our design for their specific needs.
It is often difficult to find exactly the sensor that one needs for a scientific experiment in a product. In addition, highly integrated products are many times more expensive than the individual sensor, which makes them unattractive for large numbers of units.
We designed a custom pcb (printed circuit board) for multiple I2C sensors and 3D printed a housing which allows to deploy the pcb outside. On the pcb all sensors are connected to a 1-wire-to-I2C-master-bridge which allows to connect the sensors to a processing unit using a long wire. This way, multiple instances of our board can be placed in different location and still be connected to a single processing unit. Also any influence of the processing unit to the sensors will be prevented. The housing meets various characteristics necessary for accurate measurement. To enable measurement of barometric pressure, humidity and temperature, it allows air to flow through while the board is protected from rain. The housing is printed using transparent material, so that a light sensor can operate.
We have already deployed twelve instances of our sensor board in an orchard in Italy. We decided to use Raspberry Pis as processing units, as these allow reading the sensors using very simple python scripts. Later, we plan to replace the Raspberry Pis with a microcontroller-based hardware.
