Environmental monitoring in a poultry farm using an instrument developed with the internet of things concept

Abstract

Animal welfare is a major concern these days, as well as the factors that have impact on animal productivity. Constant monitoring of environmental parameters such as temperature, humidity, levels of ammonia and luminosity is crucial because these variables directly impact poultry performance and welfare. Along these lines, it is necessary to look for solutions that allow the monitoring of these variables in a practical, reliable and cheap way. In the agribusiness, the scenario for the IoT (Internet of Things) is very promising, because it has emerged to fill this gap and deliver sensed data, widely increasing the connectivity of the devices. Therefore, this paper describes a low cost, hardware and software proposal for monitoring these environmental parameters in poultry farms. In addition, experiments were done to compare the proposed prototype with commercial devices. The measured variables showed a correlation above 0.90 between the sensors used in the prototype and the calibrated equipment, also having the cost of only 13% of that of the conventional equipment. The prototype displayed favorable results, indicating that its implementation is viable.