- Title
- Building the field component of a smart irrigation system: A detailed experience of a computer science graduate
- Creator
- Pipile, Yamnkelani Yonela
- ThesisAdvisor
- Terzoli, Alfredo
- ThesisAdvisor
- Dlodlo, Nomusa
- Subject
- Irrigation efficiency Computer-aided design South Africa
- Subject
- Irrigation projects Computer-aided design South Africa
- Subject
- Internet of things
- Subject
- Machine-to-machine communications
- Subject
- Smart water grids South Africa
- Subject
- Raspberry Pi (Computer)
- Subject
- Arduino (Programmable controller)
- Subject
- ZigBee
- Subject
- MQTT (MQ Telemetry Transport)
- Subject
- MQTT-SN
- Subject
- XBee
- Date
- 2021-10
- Type
- Master's theses
- Type
- text
- Identifier
- http://hdl.handle.net/10962/191814
- Identifier
- vital:45167
- Description
- South Africa is a semi-arid area with an average annual rainfall of approximately 450mm, 60 per cent of which goes towards irrigation. Current irrigation systems generally apply water in a uniform manner across a field, which is both inefficient and can kill the plants. The Internet of Things (IoT), an emerging technology involving the utilization of sensors and actuators to build complex feedback systems, present an opportunity to build a smart irrigation solution. This research project illustrates the development of the field components of a water monitoring system using off the shelf and inexpensive components, exploring at the same time how easy or difficult it would be for a general Computer Science graduate to use hardware components and associated tools within the IoT area. The problem was initially broken down through a classical top-down process, in order to identify the components such as micro-computers, micro- controllers, sensors and network connections, that would be needed to build the solution. I then selected the Raspberry Pi 3, the Arduino Arduino Uno, the MH-Sensor-Series hygrometer, the MQTT messaging protocol, and the ZigBee communication protocol as implemented in the XBee S2C. Once the components were identified, the work followed a bottom-up approach: I studied the components in isolation and relative to each other, through a structured series of experiments, with each experiment addressing a specific component and examining how easy was to use the component. While each experiment allowed the author to acquire and deepen her understanding of each component, and progressively built a more sophisticated prototype, towards the complete solution. I found the vast majority of the identified components and tools to be easy to use, well documented, and most importantly, mature for consumption by our target user, until I encountered the MQTT-SN (MQTT-Sensor Network) implementation, not as mature as the rest. This resulted in us designing and implementing a light-weight, general ZigBee/MQTT gateway, named “yoGa” (Yonella's Gateway) from the author. At the end of the research, I was able to build the field components of a smart irrigation system using the selected tools, including the yoGa gateway, proving practically that a Computer Science graduate from a South African University can become productive in the emerging IoT area.
- Description
- Thesis (MSc) -- Faculty of Science, Computer Science, 2021
- Format
- computer, online resource, application/pdf, 1 online resource (193 pages), pdf
- Publisher
- Rhodes University, Faculty of Science, Computer Science
- Language
- English
- Rights
- Pipile, Yamnkelani Yonela
- Rights
- Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0)
- Rights
- Open Access
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RU Department of Computer Science
| Thumbnail | File | Description | Size | Format | |||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| View Details Download | SOURCE1 | PIPILE-MSC-TR21-326.pdf | 1 MB | Adobe Acrobat PDF | View Details Download |