Preliminary study of average milking speed for the first calving cows in Simmental and Holstein breed

Mastitis is a significant disease in cattle production In order to reduce mastitis, special attention in Cattle Breeding program in Croatia has given to average milking speed (AMS). It is necessarily to achieve maximum milking speed as soon as possible and to keep it during longer period. This gives opportunity to select the animals with no extreme values of milking speed, i.e. animals with average milking speed. The objective of this study was to determine the average milking speed for first calving cows of Simmental and Holstein cattle in Croatia, and to define the environmental effects affecting this trait as well. Data consisted of 7155 test-day records of 4341 cows. Similar values of AMS mean was found for Simmental (1.56 kg/min) and Holstein breed (1.57 kg/min). The following fixed effects were tested in the model for AMS: year of calving, month of test-day control and stage of lactation, and did not show statistically significant effect. Correlations between AMS and milk traits were low

IoT-Ready Energy-Autonomous Parking Sensor Device

Finding a free parking lot contributes largely to a total traffic congestion and increases gas emissions in urban and overpopulated cities. Recent advances in smart parking systems adopt Internet of Things (IoT) concepts which tend to improve traffic bottlenecks by providing information about available parking lots. The detection of vehicle presence at the parking lot usually means adopting solutions comprised of power-hungry and battery-operated sensor devices. In this article a hardware-based approach is introduced which aims at building a self-powered and autonomous sensing node equipped with supercapacitors (battery less) to feel the vehicle presence. For purposes of detection, solar-based energy harvester and wake-up trigger prototype is considered along with a Bluetooth low-energy (BLE) radio. The joint use of such technologies is exploited to develop a power autonomous node capable of cost-effectively sensing the car presence and transmitting the parking lot status. The developed triggering system consumes only 150 nA making it suitable as a low-power solution. To initiate the trigger only 6.5 W/m2 in light level change is required comparing the two panels, which is more than adequate as the comparison of solar irradiance measured under the vehicle against diffuse horizontal irradiance shows a significant difference. The developed prototype uses a magnetometer to verify the vehicle presence upon trigger generation and BLE 5.0 technology for status change update, while supercapacitor discharge lifetime duration is estimated to be around 13 days in harsh conditions without charging from solar cells

A Smart Remote Elderly Monitoring System based on IoT Technologies

The aging population phenomenon is more and more increasing. In this context, the elderly’s behavioral analysis through the Internet of Things technologies can help to prevent Mild Cognitive Impairment and frailty problems. In particular, since movements and body motility are good indicators of behavioral changes, this work aims to define a reliable system for controlling the position and the body motility of the elderly in unobtrusive, low-cost and low-power way. The system represents the basis of a complete architecture for behavioral analysis and risk detection developed within the City4Age project, funded by the Horizon 2020 Programme of the European Commission