Development and testing of arduino based profile meter

Abstract

Ridge and lister farming are widely used conventional cultivation practice especially for the effective utilization of available water. Ridges and furrows of different size and shapes are recommended based on the crop, soil conditions, and agronomical practices etc. As mechanization has become inevitable in all agricultural operations, machines / implements for the preparation of ridges and furrows are also becoming popular and number of research and developmental works are being undertaken in this sector. In order to study the suitability of ridges and furrows formed and to compare the performance of different implements recording of furrow profile is highly essential. The methods or instruments currently used for profile recording are either less accurate or high cost, highly accurate depriving researchers to record the profile with reasonable accuracy at affordable cost. This work has been undertaken to develop a low cost profile-meter for the automatic recording of ridge or furrow profile. The designed profile-meter can measure form and critical dimensions as well as roughness of a ridge or furrow. The instrument should measure and record distances in X, Y and Z directions to obtain the 3-D view. The measurement of distance is achieved by using ultrasonic sensors and Arduino microcontroller board. Arduino board controls the entire operation of the profile-meter. Movement of sensor for taking measurements of different points is achieved with the help of DC motor and linear actuator. All the readings will be stored in SD card in both script file and text file formats. The script file can be directly dragged to AutoCAD for the direct plotting of profile. The tool can measure the soil profile having width up to 100 cm and can take roughness along lengthwise up to 50 cm. The statistical analysis of the measurementsobtained from the designed profile-meter with the actual measurements indicated that there is no significant difference between the actual profile and measured profile. Hence it is concluded that the instrument is working successfully. Overall weight of the instrument is 3 kg and has a cost of around 6000 rupees.