Hydrometeorological Data Collection, Publication And Analysis Using Open-Source Hardware And Software

Hydrometeorological data is exiguous in developing countries due to the exorbitant price of actual weather monitoring systems acquisition and communication infrastructure built mostly in developed countries. Another impediment to large scale data collection in developed countries is the lack or limited local resources to ensure the maintenance of stations equipments. However, recent advanced progresses made in information and communication technologies have paved the way to access to a large set of free software and low-cost and low-power hardware to sense and monitor the environment. Many researchers and practitioners have grasped the opportunities offered by those technological advances, but, have applied them in a restrained way. In this paper, we will attempt to make a much larger use of available and appropriate open-source hardware and software to allow for inexpensive collection, storage, publication and analysis of hydrometeorological data. Our envisioned system prototype will consist of a very few sensor nodes controlled by the Arduino micro-controller with a complete set of low-cost sensors attached to measure variables relevant to hydrological processes, a central node which gathers from each leaf nodes via Radio, data transmission over a GSM network through a Raspberry Pi from the central node. We will also explore the option to store the data into the MySQL version of the CUAHSI Observations Data Model (ODM) database using a Raspberry Pi to host the database. Access to CUAHSI Hydrologic Information System (HIS) codes will hopefully facilitate the development of software to automatically load the data into the MySQL database and publish the data

Development of a Wireless Environmental Data Acquisition Prototype Adopting Agile Practices: An Experience Report

The traditional software development model commonly named “waterfall” is unable to cope with the increasing functionality and complexity of modern embedded systems. In addition, it is unable to support the ability for businesses to quickly respond to new market opportunities due to changing requirements. As a response, the software development community developed the Agile Methodologies (e.g., extreme Programming, Scrum) which were also adopted by the Embedded System community. However, failures and bad experiences in applying Agile Methodologies to the development of embedded systems have not been reported in the literature. Therefore, this paper contributes a detailed account of our first-time experiences adopting an agile approach in the prototype development of a wireless environment data acquisition system in an academic environment. We successfully applied a subset of the extreme Programming (XP) methodology to our software development using the Python programming language, an experience that demonstrated its benefits in shaping the design of the software and also increasing productivity. We used an incremental development approach for the hardware components and adopted a “cumulative testing” approach. For the overall development process management, however, we concluded that the Promise/Commitment-Based Project Management (PBPM/ CBPM) was better suited. We discovered that software and hardware components of embedded systems are best developed in parallel or near-parallel. We learned that software components that pass automated tests may not survive in the tests against the hardware. Throughout this rapid prototyping effort, factors like team size and our availability as graduate students were major obstacles to fully apply the XP methodology

Relationship Between Irrigation Thresholds and Potato Tuber Depth in Sandy Soil

Soil disturbance resulting from tuber crop harvesting is a major threat to soil health. The depth of soil intervention is a critical factor that further strengthens the effects of such disturbance and makes harvest one of the most harmful cropping operations. In the case of potato, soil moisture is a determining factor for root and stolon development, hence, a deeper soil intervention may be required at harvest. While potato ranks as the fourth most cultivated crop worldwide, the impact of soil moisture on potato tuber vertical and horizontal distribution has received very little attention. The objective of this study was to evaluate the effects of four soil matric potential thresholds (SMPTs; –10, –20, –30, and –45 kPa) on the spatial (vertical and horizontal) distribution of potato tubers grown in plastic containers filled with sandy soil using an X-ray computed tomography scanner. The results of the experiments conducted in a greenhouse environment suggest that the horizontal distribution of the tubers did not differ significantly across the irrigation treatments. However, a linear relationship between SMPT, and therefore irrigation threshold, and potato tuber depth was observed. In addition, the deepest tuber position was observed under the –10 kPa SMPT, while the tubers were closer to the soil surface under the –45 kPa SMPT, which could lead to a greater preponderance of tuber diseases such as late blight or greening. Thus, potato irrigation events implementing a SMPT between –20 and –30 kPa could reduce the harvest depth, hence, decreasing the negative impacts of soil disturbance on soil structural stability and soil organic carbon degradation while mitigating the impacts of disease as well as reducing fuel costs, greenhouse gas emissions, soil loss and erosion