Development of data acquisition system for Plum (Prunus mume) growth monitoring

General-purpose single-board computers such as Raspberry pi help to develop IoT-based remote monitoring device cheaply and easily, so it is highly utilized to collect data on growing environment and cultivation history of plums for small and medium scale plum farms.

We have developed a remote sensing and data acquisition system using these small single-board computer at a basic stage to analyze the environmental and growth factors that can affect the productivity of plums.

The first prototype used the Arduino MKR1000 to fabricate a data acquisition and transmission module and configured the system using a cloud storage called IoT Makers operated by KT, South Korea's largest telephone company. In order to assess advantages and disadvantages of the data collection device using MKR1000, we conducted an indoor test at the Industrial Machinery Lab at Sunchon National University in 2016. Currently, we are developing a device that uses Raspberry pi as a data acquisition and transmission module.

The final data collection system will be installed in the plum field near Suncheon in 2017 and the actual sensing data will be collected. The collected data will be used to analyze factors related to the improvement of plum productivity.

Remote data collection using low-cost, general-purpose IoT devices will provide the possibility to discover factors related to productivity of various crops as well as plums with low cost and effort.